Slashdot Mirror
Killer Virus 'From Paramyxoviridae Family'
texchanchan writes "Yahoo story about the microbe that's been killing world travelers being isolated and identified as a 'paramyxoviridae' virus (not a bacterium. Simple page on the difference.) Here are pictures of similar viruses (Rinderpest, ugh! sounds as bad as anthrax) from the Big Picture Book of Viruses."
I wonder how soon doctors will be able to release a service pack for this virus?
Well, I think that, assuming most of the reports are true, the world may be able to breathe a collective (but cautious) sigh of relief. (knock on wood) It isn't influenza. This is good. It doesn't spread through the air/casual contact. This, too, is good. I know for a fact (through collaborators) that the CDC is really, really focused on this right now. Finally, WHO is suggesting that this won't be a global pandemic. This is very good. It also seems that, according to the news, a few people are recovering. I'm really, really impressed at how focused the international health community can be, even when separated by political boundaries and vast geographical boundaries. Lets hope they keep up the pressure to keep this contained.
Could you imagine an influenza strain that spreads through the air and causes chronic lung damage (and lots of deaths)? That would be devastating.
Anyway, here is the ultimate of Karma whoring: The Google News link for the story
-Sean
My manager is like a virus. He'll keep injecting his own code into a perfectly good working application someone else made until the thing bursts, and then he'll move on the the next application.
It's only a matter of time before they develop a vaccine for it.
Repeal the DMCA!
What a relief! You won't believe how much sleep I've been losing thinking it could be a pseudopicornaviridae!
...they will enjoy the Big Book of Viruses. Every night!
It's my understanding that this same family of viruses is responsible for measles and mumps in humans and distemper in dogs. For a little information about this virus, check here. All of those have vaccines for them. So would it be possible to prepare a vaccine for this virus, too?
This is not particularly surprising: viruses in that family cause a lot of "common colds" and other URIs (among them, parainfluenza is in that family). See here and here.
Whatever you do, stay away from guys with the initials RF.
This family of viruses (paramyxoviruses) are very closely related to influenza viruses- in fact, influenzas belong to the family orthomyxoviridae. Myxo, by the way, comes from the Greek for "mucus"- appropriate given their tendency to cause respiratory tract infections.
Both families are single-stranded "antisense" RNA viruses- the RNA strand is complementary to a coding, or "sense" strand of mRNA that it acts as a template for. It should be noted that while these are RNA viruses, they are not retroviruses, as some other posters have suggested- no reverse transcriptase, no DNA stage- instead of hijacking the cell's transcription machinery like HIV, myxoviruses are slightly more considerate guests- they come packing their own RNA polymerase proteins. The RNA polymerase makes a gigantic number of of sense mRNA from the antisense strand. Once these get made, the virus stops being a considerate guest in the cell- the mRNAs head over to the ribosomes in the cell and get translated into proteins just as if the cell's genome had produced them. These are of course viral proteins however- new capsids (protein envelopes), new polymerases, new glycoproteins. This is the part where it really starts to suck for the cell- the original viral antisense mRNA gets replicated many times, and then gets packed into the newly made viral particles. The viruses then lyse (kill) their host cell and then spread out an move on to a new cell. This takes about 20-30 minutes from fusion with the cell to lysis usually.
Both ortho- and para- myxovirus families respond to a characteristic test called hemagglutination, which is pretty much what it sounds like- a glycoprotein on the surface of the virus causes red blood cells to clump together. The major difference between the orthomyxoviridae and paramyxoviridae families is simply a matter of genome arrangement- ortho viruses like the influenzas have their genomes cut into several different smaller segments inside the virus, while the para viruses like measles, rinderpest, and our mystery illness have a single segment.
It should be stressed that genome comparisons are of limited help at the level of families- all the single-stranded antisense RNA viruses have pretty much the same structure, but they code for quite different glycoproteins (these are sugar-protein hybrid molecules on the surface of the virus). Glycoproteins are both the source of host recognition- they bind to specific receptors on a cell (these receptors are often, but not always, unique to the cells of a species)- and the agent that kills the cell. In the paramyxoviruses, remarkably these two functions (fusion and lysis) are carried out by two linked subunits on the same glycoprotein.
The variety of glycoproteins these RNA viruses have produced have made them incredibly diverse- they infect plants, animals, humans, they cause all manner of symptoms. The paramyxoviruses, for example, have members which result in mumps and measles, and then others that cause pneumonia. A closely related family (also ss antisense RNA) are the rhabdoviruses, some of which infect plants, and one of which causes rabies. Another antisense ssRNA family are the filoviruses, which tend to have rather toxic glycoproteins- members include Marburg and Ebola.
While it is a relief that the virus causing this deadly outbreak of pneumonia has been isolated, and catalogued in relation to other viruses, it should be noted that finding this relation may be of little use, given the nearly infinite variety displayed by even its closest relatives.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Killer Virus 'From Paramyxoviridae Family'
I always said that family caused nothin' but trouble.
The "service pack" for Newcastle is usually total destruction of all the birds in the area near the infection. Probably because vaccinations cost more than chickens do.
No seriously, is the virus dangerous if the birds are cooked or do they need to be incinerated?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The media is now reporting that most of the cases from Hong Kong all seem to have been exposed at a particular hotel floor... Here's a link to the story.
It also occurs to me that if one was drowning, yelling "Help! I'm drowning and I lost my bikini top" would probably be m
If I recall correctly, another problem arises when investigating these rare disease conditions: It becomes really hard to tell if your therapies are even really working. Did the patients get better because of the anti-virals and the corticosteroid/anti-inflammatory therapies or would they have gotten better with enough time? Hard to say b/c you just don't have a large enough treatment population (what 240 odd cases worldwide) and absolutely no idea what your denominator is. Can't even prove statistical significance here...
Ahhh...all those Epidemiology classes that I slept through are coming back to me now...zzzzzzzzzzz
DaveC
There are no stupid questions...just stupid people.