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New tick-borne virus discovered--Bourbon virus

Iquitos

Senior Member
Messages
513
Location
Colorado

jerrymcfadyen

Senior Member
Messages
123
Location
East Bend, NC USA
Wow, some eye opening information in the video. My part of North Carolina looks like ground zero on the map showing reported tick vectored disease.
I've got a ton of homework to do now!
 

Research 1st

Severe ME, POTS & MCAS.
Messages
768
This is food for thought, from CBS News in 2012 on ticks, viruses and possible 'accidents' at Plum Island animal research center (opposite ground zero where 'Lyme disease' gets its name from).

"There was construction going on on the island and there was a release of virus from the laboratory," Grubman said, though he added that the virus never left Plum Island or reached the mainland. Back then, animals were kept outside in pens, as seen in CBS News footage. When the virus escaped, it quickly spread from one animal to the next. More than 200 animals had to be put to death. A vocal critic of Plum Island is Michael Carroll, who detailed his reasons in his book, "Lab 257." He says the USDA's record of running the island is "somewhere between dismal and abominable. Their record is really a record of mishaps, outbreaks, people getting infected." After the 1978 outbreak, biocontainment facilities (that's sealed laboratories and holding cells) were built and all animals were moved inside.


I cannot comment on our list of pathogens and the inventories and all those things that are sensitive information," said Luis Rodriguez, a research leader work for the Agricultural Research Service, an arm of the USDA on Plum Island

Source: CBS News, Pluming the mysteries of plum island.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/plumbing-the-mysteries-of-plum-island/
 

duncan

Senior Member
Messages
2,240
It's a brand new virus, far from Plum Island and the east coast. It's zoonotic, with the tick merely the intermediary. They need to trace the virus back to its natural host.

It is not bacterial. Lyme is bacterial.

That it was first discovered in Kansas may or may not be meaningful. But it's not just humans they are finding new TBD's in. They've also just found a brand new candidate tick borne virus in ducks.

Ironically, many of the Plum Island activities made notorious in Lab 257 are being moved. To where? Kansas.
 

IreneF

Senior Member
Messages
1,552
Location
San Francisco
The really nasty diseases you can get via a tick bite are nearly all bacterial, and some of them are far worse than Lyme. This may be a virus that the tick picked up from an animal and then gave to a human. I can't find out anything about it, or the man who died.
 

acer2000

Senior Member
Messages
818
I think Dr. Lipkin had a good insight when he decided (proposed) to survey ticks using a broad based approach to see what pathogens they harbor (beyond the usual suspects). It is very likely they will find many pathogens that we have never considered.

In fact, now that there is high throughput DNA sequencing available for pathogens at a reasonable cost there really isn't any excuse to not do this. In humans also.
 
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IreneF

Senior Member
Messages
1,552
Location
San Francisco
I think Dr. Lipkin had a good insight when he decided (proposed) to survey ticks using a broad based approach to see what pathogens they harbor (beyond the usual suspects). It is very likely they will find many pathogens that we have never considered.

In fact, now that there is high throughput DNA sequencing available for pathogens at a reasonable cost there really isn't any excuse to not do this. In humans also.
How do you know a given microbe is a human pathogen and not a lizard pathogen?
 

acer2000

Senior Member
Messages
818
How do you know a given microbe is a human pathogen and not a lizard pathogen?

IMHO you do the sequencing and then you cross that bridge when you get there. If you never look, then you won't even have the opportunity to ask that question. :)
 

Iquitos

Senior Member
Messages
513
Location
Colorado
Yes, acer2000, and some known lizard pathogens can sicken humans, as in the case of bacteria that pet lizards and turtles often have.
 

duncan

Senior Member
Messages
2,240
Nymphal I. Pacificus ticks feed on lizards in California. The same ticks can infect humans with Lyme.
 

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
There's probably more about this in the US press, but I came across this in a UK news outlet...

Bourbon virus: researchers discover mystery tick-borne deadly virus
23 December 2014
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...r-mystery-tickborne-deadly-virus-9942584.html
A new disease has been discovered and named the Bourbon Virus, six months after it killed a man in the US.

The virus is carried by ticks and is named after Bourbon County in Kansas, where a man died from it in the summer. It has taken since then for researchers to solve the mystery of how he died.

The disease is similar to another disease known as the heartland virus, which is also passed through tick bites. The initial symptoms were similar, consisting of fever and malaise and anorexia.
 

duncan

Senior Member
Messages
2,240
Yes, and a sorta interesting thing is that this virus was first identified in Kansas, in the heartland, as opposed to first finding it on one of the coasts. (And as somebody astutely pointed out, that doesn't mean the virus originated there.)

That's at least two deadly viruses if you include the powassan virus in the US. Europe also has an encephalitis that I think is viral, but I'm not sure. And then there are the mounting cases of Lyme carditis. Hmmm...come to think of it, wasn't there another TBD that was identified in hunters or farmers in neighboring Missouri within the past year? I'm beginning to lose track of them all...

I have written earlier about the humorous fact that the virus was first named in Kansas, which is where much of the Plum Island operations of Lab 257 fame are purportedly being relocated to. And no, I'm not a keen supporter of the biowarfare link. :cool:
 
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Iquitos

Senior Member
Messages
513
Location
Colorado
And now the CDC is saying these newly discovered viruses (Bourbon virus and Heartland virus) could be from ticks, mosquitos and/or sand flies. They took blood from a lot of different animals and haven't yet discovered a transmission route, but both patients with Heartland virus had been bitten multiple times by ticks (one had 20 ticks "imbedded" in his skin.) They were treated with doxycycline and their docs said it didn't help, BUT neither died. The news articles don't say whether the guy with Bourbon virus was treated with antivirals or antibiotics. He's the one who died.

Both viruses were named for the counties in Kansas where they were first "discovered." Bourbon County adjoins Missouri.

And, off topic, from the news stories I've learned that the CDC has a pathology lab in Ft. Collins, Colorado, not far from where I live. CDC incompetence is revealed almost daily, the latest being that some lab workers have been exposed to Ebola due to substandard safety procedures.

Article in the New England Journal of Medicine on the Heartland (Missouri) patients:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1203378#t=articleTop
It's interesting that those patients experienced many of the symptoms of ME/CFS, including short term memory loss and extreme fatigue. And that no family members or caregivers got the illness. Virions were found in their bone marrow.
 
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Daffodil

Senior Member
Messages
5,875
if a new virus or bacteria is affecting us, why wasn't it found when they did genetic sequencing on gut tissue? granted the sample was very small, but wouldn't they have found something?

maybe that is a dumb question, ...