Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Nipahvirus is most likely spread from bats to other species and causes lethal encephalitis in humans and respiratory illness in pigs. Different species are affected with varying severity but it seems to have an unprecedented zoonotic capacity and the humans affected either die or receive permanent brain damage. Full recovery is possible but very uncommon. Pigs that live and are bread in the areas that these bats frequent are constantly in danger of contracting pneumonias and meningitis and they can spread the virus further on to the people who work with the pigs and process their carcasses. These workers could then infect other humans in their immediate surroundings, their families for instance. To avoid spreading the virus we must also protect the food intended for human consumption because there have been reports about people falling ill from Nipahvirus after drinking palm sap gathered in areas with a bat population. Another important aspect of the virus is the loss of food and the economic consequences of having to stamp out infections on pig farms. The virus pathology is not entirely uncomplicated. There are great individual differences and the symptoms of the infection differ with different transmission routes. If inoculated nasally-orally or naturally infected the pigs did much better and suffered the same degree of lesions or illness than when inoculated subcutaneously. If this also applies to humans is unknown. The pigs that fell sick in the first outbreak primarily developed respiratory diseases but a few cases of neurological symptoms were present. The humans involved in the same outbreak mostly suffered CNS-symptoms but also to an extent respiratory illness and lesions of the kidney and other organs. As many as 70% of humans who develop symptoms die, most of them within two weeks, and the rest suffers permanent brain damage of varying degrees.