A new strain of Influenza type A, an avian flu strain has been identified in bats in Peruvian caves.
The virus has been named A/bat/Peru/10. The virus belongs to a class of avian strains that are known to be able to cross the zoonotic barrier.
At this point, its virality seems to be very low, and the virus does not pose a need for immediate action. In fact, the researchers have failed to grow the virus in simian or human tissue, indicating that the virus might not even be of a class that can easily infect humans.
The virus is also believed to be so genetically specific that it can only grow on the intestinal tissue of bats.
But, as with all viruses, mutations, or exposure to new animals or human beings could cause the virus to mutate or re-adapt, and antigen shift as it is known, and become a threat, so that the researchers cannot rule that the virus cannot become a threat to man in a distant future.
Just last year, scientists identified another strain of A influenza in fruit bats, in Guatemala, of the H17N10 type. And that poses a larger question: are bats the natural reservoir for many influenza viruses, and many other pathogens, inlcuding the most famous, rabies, that should prompt a much wider study of the animal?
Although the majority of bat pathogens are not yet able to cross over and infect humans, the bats are also animals that can hots the viruses through many mutations, so that the course and nature of the viruses should prompt charting and scrutiny.
In fact, the latest deadly outbreatk of MERS, a Coronavirus whose spread is centered in the Saudi peninsula and limitrophe countries, is by now believed to be spread through single or multiple cross-overs from its reservoir, the bat, to other hosts and then to humans.
What is also not known, and worthy of study, is how the viruses enter and colonize the bats' tissues.
Source : Live Science/ 10.24.13
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