1. Emerging Disease or Diagnosis?
- Author
-
Gire, Stephen K., Stremlau, Matthew, Andersen, Kristian G., Schaffner, Stephen F., Bjornson, Zach, Rubins, Kathleen, Hensley, Lisa, McCormick, Joseph B., Lander, Eric. S., Garry, Robert F., Happi, Christian, and Sabeti, Pardis C.
- Subjects
- *
LASSA fever , *MARBURG virus disease , *EBOLA virus disease , *HEMORRHAGIC fever , *EMERGING infectious diseases , *SEROPREVALENCE , *VIRAL transmission , *VIRAL evolution , *BIOLOGICAL adaptation , *HUMAN genome , *EPIDEMIOLOGY , *DIAGNOSIS - Abstract
The article discusses research that suggests that outbreaks of Lassa, Marburg, and Ebola hemorrhagic fever viruses in Africa can be attributed to improvements in the diagnosis and detection of common and widespread diseases, rather than evidence of emerging pathogens. It is noted that seroprevalence surveys indicate widespread exposure to these viruses in sub-Saharan Africa, possibly from contact with animal disease reservoirs such as the Mastomys natalensis mouse, fruit bat, and nonhuman primates. Other topics include analysis of the evolutionary divergence of these viruses pointing to ancient origins, genomic analysis of human adaptations to hemorrhagic fever viruses, and viral research at community health clinics in Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF