Most rabies infections in the United States come from bats, CDC says.

 

Most rabies infections in the United States come from bats, CDC says.In the United States, the culprit behind most rabies cases has shifted from dogs to bats. The flying mammals now cause 7 out of 10 US rabies cases, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

 Researchers looked at rabies trends in the United States over the span of 80 years, from 1938 to 2018. They found that most infections came from dog bites until 1960, when wildlife species -- specifically bats -- became the primary source for human infection. 

This followed nationwide efforts in the 1950s to mandate pet vaccines and implement leash control laws, the report stated. "Reducing rabies in dogs is a remarkable achievement of the U.S. public health system, but with this deadly disease still present in thousands of wild animals, it's important that Americans are aware of the risk," CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said in a news release. 

From 1960 to 2018, 125 human rabies were cases reported . From 1960 to 2018, 125 human rabies were cases reported in the United States. Of these, 28% came from contact with dogs outside the United States, where rabies vaccines may not be required or readily available. 

The cases acquired in the United States came from wildlife species, with 70% resulting from bat bites or scratches and the rest due to human contact with raccoons, skunks or foxes. In the United States, most human deaths from rabies occur because people don't seek medical treatment, probably because they are unaware of the animal contact. 

For example, bat bites can be smaller than the top of a pencil eraser, the CDC said. "We've been seeing cases in people in the United States who seem to not really be aware that rabies can be transmitted by wildlife, especially bats," Pieracci said. "A lot of times, bat bites and scratches are very tiny. So a lot of people will try to hold a bat and they don't realize that bat has bitten."

 If you happen to wake up with a bat in your immediate surroundings, you should assume rabies exposure and seek medical care right away, the CDC recommends.

US had 5 rabies deaths last year, highest total in a decade.

 

Five Americans died of rabies last year — the largest number in a decade — and health officials said Thursday that some of the people didn't realize they had been infected or refused life-saving shots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report on three of the deaths, all stemming from contact with bats. 

CDC officials said the deaths were tragic and could have been prevented. One, an 80-year-old Illinois man, refused to take life-saving shots because of a longstanding fear of vaccines. An Idaho man and a Texas boy did not get shots because of a belief that no bat bite or scratch broke their skin. In all three cases, people “either trivialized the exposure (to bats) or they didn't recognize the severity of rabies,” said Ryan Wallace, a CDC rabies expert who co-authored the report. 

 Two other deaths occurred earlier in 2021. One was a Minnesota man bitten by a bat. He got the shots, but an undiagnosed immune system problem hampered their effectiveness, CDC officials said. The other victim was bitten by a rabid dog while traveling in the Philippines and died in New York after returning to the U.S.

 Rabies is caused by a virus that invades the central nervous system and is usually fatal in animals and humans. It’s most commonly spread through a bite from an infected animal, with most U.S. infections in recent years traced to bat encounters.

Health links are key to preventing future pandemics.

Health links are key to preventing future pandemics.The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that zoonotic diseases – infections that pass from animals to humans – can present tremendous threats to global health. More than 70% of emerging and reemerging pathogens originate from animals. 

That probably includes the SARS CoV-2 virus, which scientists widely believe originated in bats. There are still questions about specifically where the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged. But experts across the globe agree that communities can take steps to reduce the risk of future spillovers. 

A key is for veterinarians, doctors and scientists to work together, recognizing how closely connected human health is with that of animals and of the habitats that we share – an approach known as One Health. 

 To prevent new pandemics, scientists need to identify specific locations where viruses are most likely to make the jump from animals to humans. In turn, this requires understanding how human behaviors – from deforestation to fossil fuel combustion to conflict to cultural activities – contribute to spillover risks.

Evolution of pandemic coronavirus outlines path from animals to humans.

Evolution of pandemic coronavirus outlines path from animals to humans.The virus's ability to change makes it likely that new human coronaviruses will arise. A team of scientists studying the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, found that it was especially well-suited to jump from animals to humans by shapeshifting as it gained the ability to infect human cells. Conducting a genetic analysis, researchers from Duke University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Texas at El Paso and New York University confirmed that the closest relative of the virus was a coronavirus that infects bats. But that virus's ability to infect humans was gained through exchanging a critical gene fragment from a coronavirus that infects a scaly mammal called a pangolin, which made it possible for the virus to infect humans. The researchers report that this jump from species-to-species was the result of the virus's ability to bind to host cells through alterations in its genetic material. By analogy, it is as if the virus retooled the key that enables it to unlock a host cell's door -- in this case a human cell. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the "key" is a spike protein found on the surface of the virus. Coronaviruses use this protein to attach to cells and infect them.

COVID-19:A close relative of SARS-CoV-2 found in bats offers more evidence it evolved naturally.

COVID-19:A close relative of SARS-CoV-2 found in bats offers more evidence it evolved naturally.There is ongoing debate among policymakers and the general public about where SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, came from. While researchers consider bats the most likely natural hosts for SARS-CoV-2, the origins of the virus are still unclear. On May 10 in the journal Current Biology, researchers describe a recently identified bat coronavirus that is SARS-CoV-2's closest relative in some regions of the genome and which contains insertions of amino acids at the junction of the S1 and S2 subunits of the virus's spike protein in a manner similar to SAR-CoV-2. While it's not a direct evolutionary precursor of SARS-CoV-2, this new virus, RmYN02, suggests that these types of seemingly unusual insertion events can occur naturally in coronavirus evolution, the researchers say.

VETERINARY MEDICINE:Poultry, pigs not susceptible to COVID-19.

German researchers: Poultry, pigs not susceptible to COVID-19.Scientists in Germany have confirmed that chickens and pigs are not susceptible to COVID-19. Researchers around the world have been trying to find out whether SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, can infect other species after it was understood to have originated from bats. Germany’s Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut started infection studies in chickens, pigs, fruit bats and ferrets several weeks ago, inoculating animals nasally with SARS-CoV-2 to mimic the natural route of infection in humans. While early results indicated fruit bats and ferrets are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, pigs and chickens are not.The researchers said they tested chickens and pigs due to the close contact they make with humans. Tests were carried out to discover whether animals become infected, whether the pathogen replicates, and if the animals show symptoms of the disease.“Under experimental conditions, neither chickens nor were found to be susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2,” the institute said. “According to the current state of knowledge, they are not affected by the virus and therefore do not pose a potential risk to human health.” The final results are expected at the beginning of May. The German study follows research carried out in China that investigated the susceptibility of ferrets and animals in close contact with humans to COVID-19. Scientists at the Harbin Vet Research Institute found that SARS-CoV-2 replicates poorly in dogs, chickens, pigs, and ducks but efficiently in ferrets and cats. #COVID-19 #coronavirus #veterinarymedicine #onehealth.

Scientists Say Bats Could Be Linked To Coronavirus .

Scientists Say Bats Could Be Linked To Coronavirus As Videos Of Bat Soup Appear Online.Scientists in China have suggested the coronavirus could have originated from fruit bats, while videos of people tucking into bat soup have been shared online. A statement published in the South China Morning Post: "The Wuhan coronavirus' natural host could be bats... but between bats and humans there may be an unknown intermediate."The report comes as videos have gone viral showing people tucking into bat soup - considered a delicacy in parts of China. Clips shared online show a bat floating inside a bowl of broth, while another shows a woman eating a bat with a pair of chopsticks. Scientists are still unclear on how the virus has spread, but the report found it has a 'strong binding affinity' to a human protein called ACE2. Scientists say this binding protein has a 'high resemblance to that of SARS'.more

RESEARCH: Ebola virus found in bat in West Africa for the first time.

RESEARCH: Ebola virus found in bat in West Africa for the first time.The Ebola virus has been found in a bat in Liberia, the country’s government and scientists with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health announced this week. The discovery marks the first time the virus has ever been found in a bat in West Africa, though it has previously been found in bats in Central Africa, according to the Tech Times. The university's Mailman School of Public Health said in a statement Thursday that scientists found “genetic material from the virus and ebolavirus antibodies” in a greater long-fingered bat located in the Nimna District of Liberia. Preliminary testing indicates a specific strain of the virus — Zaire ebolavirus — may have been found in the bat. Zaire ebolavirus is “responsible for causing the West African Ebola epidemic which infected nearly 30,000 people between 2013 and 2016,” according to the Mailman School of Public Health's statement.

New coronavirus emerges from bats in China, devastates young swine.

New coronavirus emerges from bats in China, devastates young swine. A newly identified coronavirus that killed nearly 25,000 piglets in 2016-17 in China emerged from horseshoe bats near the origin of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which emerged in 2002 in the same bat species. The new virus, called swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV), doesn't appear to infect people, unlike SARS-CoV which infected more than 8,000 people and killed 774. No SARS-CoV cases have been identified since 2004. The study investigators identified SADS-CoV on four pig farms in China's Guangdong Province.

Vampire bat rabies kills hundreds of cattle a year in Peru.

Vampire bat rabies kills hundreds of cattle a year in Peru.The vampire bat is known to be the principle reservoir of rabies throughout Latin America, yet the burden of vampire bat-transmitted rabies on human lives and livestock has been largely anecdotal. Now, researchers have calculated that, in Peru, more than 500 cattle a year die of rabies. Rabies is among the most important zoonoses for human and animal health in Latin America. The common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) is the principle reservoir, and the main prevention methods are culling of bats and vaccination of humans and livestock. In Peru, recent geographic expansion of vampire bat rabies (VBR) has raised public health concerns, but the true incidence of VBR and the rate of under-reporting of cases is unknown. #rabies #publichealth #agribusiness.

Hepatitis C-like viruses identified in bats and rodents.

As many as one in 50 people around the world is infected with some type of hepacivirus or pegivirus, including up to 200 million with hepatitis C virus (HCV), a leading cause of liver failure and liver cancer. There has been speculation that these agents arose in wildlife and jumped species to infect humans; however, little was known about their distribution in other species. Hepatitis C-like viruses identified in bats and rodents.Investigators report the discovery of hepaciviruses and pegiviruses -- close relatives of HCV -- in rodents and bats. The viruses are similar to those that infect humans and may therefore provide insights into the origins of HCV, as well as the mechanisms behind animal-to-human transmission. It may also enable development of new animal models. The discovery may also enable development of new animal systems with which to model HCV pathogenesis, vaccine design, and treatment.As reported in mBio, screened more than 400 wild-caught rodents. Molecular analysis revealed the presence of hepaciviruses and pegiviruses closely related to those found in humans. The rodent hepaviviruses contained sequences that are thought to play a role in liver infection in HCV.

New model could help improve prediction of outbreaks of Ebola and Lassa fever.

New model could help improve prediction of outbreaks of Ebola and Lassa fever.Potential outbreaks of diseases such as Ebola and Lassa fever may be more accurately predicted thanks to a new mathematical model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge. This could in turn help inform public health messages to prevent outbreaks spreading more widely. Many of the major new outbreaks of disease, particularly in Africa, are so-called zoonotic infections, diseases that are transmitted to humans from animals. The Ebola virus, for example, which recently killed over 11,000 people across Africa, was most likely transmitted to humans from fruit bats. The beauty of the model, say the researchers, is that it is simple to implement, so public health officials and non-mathematicians could easily use it. It also allows for the incorporation of data from different disciplines, factoring in socioeconomic, ecological and environmental factors, for example

WHAT IS MARBURG? THIS VIRUS CAUSES VICTIMS TO BLEED FROM EVERY ORIFICE AND DIE

WHAT IS MARBURG? THIS VIRUS CAUSES VICTIMS TO BLEED FROM EVERY ORIFICE AND DIE. The virus is usually spread to humans from animals, most often bats and monkeys. Once in the human population, it can continue to spread by contact with bodily fluids from infected individuals. In Uganda, there’s currently an outbreak of Marburg virus, an extremely infectious virus that causes victims to bleed from every orifice before finally succumbing to severe dehydration and blood loss. With a current fatality rate of 100 percent, the African nation has also reported a national outbreak of the horrific virus, also known as Ebola’s cousin. Here’s what you need to know. First recognized in 1967, Marburg virus, formerly known as Marburg haemorrhagic fever, is a rare but extremely fatal hemorrhagic disease. The World Health Organization report that the fatality rate is about 50/50 for this virus, but in past outbreaks fatality rates have been as high as 88 percent. In the current outbreak all three of the three victims have died from the disease and Uganda did not wait for further deaths before declaring a national outbreak on October 19, CNN reported. The CDC report initial symptoms of the virus include fever chills, headache and generally not feeling very well. Later on, however, the symptoms can become more serious, such as nausea, vomiting, chest pain, sore throat, abdominal pain, and severe diarrhea. The symptoms of the Marburg virus include high fevers, head and body aches, and gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea

What do MDs know about zoonoses?

What do MDs know about zoonoses? Research indicates that human physicians are unaware of and uncomfortable discussing zoonotic diseases. But veterinarians can help fill the knowledge gap.If you visited your doctor and asked her to fill you in on zoonotic disease risks, how much do you think she’d be able to tell you, and how comfortable do you think she’d feel talking about it? Most likely not very comfortable at all, says Audrey Ruple, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVPM, MRCVS, assistant professor of epidemiology at Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and speaker at a recent Fetch dvm360 veterinary conference. When it comes down to it, zoonosis is the purview of veterinarians, Dr. Ruple says. First, let’s look at what the average human patient knows about zoonosis, according to research compiled by Dr. Ruple. In a survey conducted in 2009, only 54% of respondents said they knew they could get intestinal helminths from dogs.1 People just don’t know what they don’t know. Here are some more findings: 98% of respondents had heard of rabies (that’s good!), but only 58% knew that rabies exposure could be deadly (that’s bad). 83% of respondents would go to the ER if exposed to rabies, and 89% of respondents knew you could get rabies from bats. But wait. It gets better. When asked where they got their information about zoonotic disease: 49% of respondents thought TV, newspaper or the internet was the most important source of information about zoonotic diseases. 35% of respondents thought veterinarians were the most important source of information about zoonotic disease. Only 6% of respondents thought doctors were the most important source of information about zoonotic disease.

Florida resident bitten by a bat dies of rabies.

Florida resident bitten by a bat dies of rabies.Health officials say a Florida resident who was bitten by a bat has died of rabies. Florida Department of Health spokeswoman Mara Gambineri tells Orlando TV station WKMG the victim didn’t seek treatment. She didn’t identify the victim, who lived in Highlands County in southwest Florida, or say when the bite occurred or when the victim died. She says it’s important to avoid direct contact with wildlife. Gambineri says it’s important for bite victims to receive treatment as soon as possible, adding that untreated rabies can cause a nearly 100 percent fatal illness in humans. Health officials say the main wildlife sources of rabies in Florida are raccoons and bats. Outside cats are by far the most common domestic animal found to have rabies in the state of Florida because they are often not kept up to date on vaccinations.

How to make your fruit trees produce 10 times more.

How to make your fruit trees produce 10 times more. 1.Go with Dwarfs. If you don’t want to wait several years to get fruit from your garden, consider planting dwarf varieties of your favorite trees. Dwarfs don’t grow as tall or as wide as a full-size tree so they begin to bear fruit within the first 2-3 years. These smaller trees also don’t require as much space, making them perfect for gardeners who want to grow their own fruit but don’t have a lot of land. 2.Prune as Needed. Fruit-trees ideally need to be trained in their first few years of growth into the shape you want them to maintain throughout their productive lives. Pruning should be done at the end of winter, before the tree comes out of dormancy. 3.Root-Suckers and Water-Sprouts. it is important to recognize that not all growth is good-growth. The production of flowers and fruit require a huge investment of nutrients and energy from your plants so you want to be certain that these resources aren’t being wasted where they aren’t needed. Root-suckers and water sprouts are two such wastes. New shoots that grow from the rootstock of a grafted fruit tree are known as root-suckers. These growths often look like a new plant that has taken root at the base of the existing parent. On the other hand, Water-sprouts are vertical shoots that grow straight-up from the established limbs of trees. While these growths aren’t nearly as undesirable as root-suckers, they can still be a waste of nutrients if they aren’t properly controlled. 4.Encourage Pollination Among your native plants, make sure something is blooming each season. Beneficial animals like bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, and bats are a few of the top-pollinators. For this reason, it is important to keep your garden hospitable for wildlife. Avoid overuse of pesticides which can kill beneficial-insects. 5.Know Your Soil. Plants are a lot like people in that different varieties and species have different tastes. It is important to know what balance of nutrients and trace minerals is best for each plant. Soil-pH can also play a big part in maximizing fruit yields. If you aren’t sure what kind of soil you have, it’s always better to test samples from around your trees and shrubs. Once you know what’s missing, you can amend the soil to boost future fruit-production. 6.Harvest Everything. This is perhaps the easiest advice to follow when it comes to growing successful fruit trees. Still, it bears mentioning. Unharvested fruit left-on the branch at the end of the season actually signals to the tree or bush that it made too much that-year. During the next growing season, the plant will actually produce less as a result. So make sure to pick-all of the fruit that your garden grows and let your plants know that you just can’t get enough!

VETERINARY MEDICINE: Knowing more about animal bites and rabies may save your life .

VETERINARY MEDICINE: Knowing more about animal bites and rabies may save your life . Cases of rabies have come up in the past week with children in villages near Serian, Sarawak being hospitalized after animal bites.

 VETERINARY MEDICINE: Knowing more about animal bites and rabies may save your life .Two children have died so far. Rabies is caused by a virus (genus Lyssavirus), and is derived from the Latin word for “to rage”. The disease has been recognized for over 4,000 years, though it was only in 1885 that the first vaccine for it was created by French biologist Louis Pasteur. 

 That vaccine is the predecessor of the highly effective vaccines we have today.The virus is transmitted through the infected saliva of a host animal, usually through a bite or scratch from an infected animal.more VETERINARY MEDICINE: Knowing more about animal bites and rabies may save your life . 

 According to the World Health Organization (WHO), dogs are the main source of infection, contributing up to 99% of all rabies transmissions to humans. Many animals can be host to the rabies virus, although it’s most common in dogs, cats, bats, foxes, jackals and mongooses.

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Two major groups of rabies virus display distinct evolutionary trends.

Genome data reveal the evolutionary patterns that underlie jumps between rabies host species.Using hundreds of viral genome sequences, scientists have shown that two major groups of rabies virus have unique evolutionary tendencies and their findings are presented in a study published in PLOS Pathogens. Diseases that jump from other vertebrate hosts to humans are a major public health threat, but the evolutionary mechanisms behind these jumps are poorly understood. With its long history of jumping between host species, the rabies virus offers a good opportunity to identify evolutionary patterns associated with such shifts. The scientists compared 321 viral genome sequences collected from 66 countries over 65 years. The analysis revealed very different evolutionary patterns for bat-related rabies, which is found in bats and some carnivores; versus dog-related rabies, which is responsible for almost all human cases of rabies and is found in both dogs and wild carnivores. The data suggest that different subgroups of bat-related rabies do not evolve uniformly, but dog-related rabies usually evolves at a steady rate. For dog-related rabies, host jumping was linked to multiple evolutionary patterns, such as parallel changes in amino acid sequences between different host species. The data also suggest that dog-related rabies may not need to evolve much to jump to new carnivore hosts.

Researchers highlight link between feral pigs , vampire bats and rabies.

Researchers highlight alarming link between feral pigs and vampire bats,according to results of a study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The number of vampire bats, which transmit rabies and are a concern for livestock breeders, may be increasing in Brazil and the Americas along with growth in the populations of invasive feral pigs and wild boars (Sus scrofa). The researchers recently reported an alarming rise in the numbers and distribution of S. scrofa, as well as showing that the common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus is now feeding on the blood of these animals. As numbers of invasive feral pigs increase, so does the damage to crops and native fauna, among other problems. S. scrofa is also a growing source of blood for vampire bats, so the population of D. rotundus is also likely to increase. Only three of the approximately 1,200 known bat species feed exclusively on blood, and all three are found only in the Americas. D. rotundus is the most widely distributed, inhabiting a territory that ranges from Mexico to Argentina. This species feeds mostly on livestock and poultry, but it has also been documented to prey on mammals such as tapirs and deer. In Brazil's Atlantic Forest biome, about 1.4% of vampire bats are infected with rabies. The proportion may be as high as 10% in the Peruvian Amazon. Transmission of rabies by vampire bats is a major concern for ranchers in Brazil, even in areas where cattle are routinely vaccinated. Wild animals, including feral pigs, are not vaccinated and may therefore pose a serious threat by spreading this disease. The researchers have used camera traps to monitor mammals in the Brazilian Pantanal and Atlantic Forest for the past 12 years. These are remotely activated infrared cameras that film at night when triggered by sensors that detect the presence of an animal. After checking 10,529 photos and videos with several examples of vampire bats feeding on feral pigs, cattle, tapirs, and red brocket deer (Mazama americana), the researchers selected 158 independent events in the Pantanal (101 with feral pigs, 38 with deer, and 19 with tapirs), and 87 events in the Atlantic Forest (35 with feral pigs, 29 with deer, and 23 with tapirs). Based on these events, they estimated that the probability of vampire bat attacks on feral pigs was as high as 10% for nights in which recordings were made.

Fungus-infecting virus could help track spread of white-nose syndrome in bats.

A newly discovered virus infecting the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome in bats could help scientists and wildlife agencies track the spread of the disease that is decimating bat populations in the United States, according to a new study. The study published online in PLOS Pathogens, the researchers were able to eliminate the virus from one fungal isolate, which provided a virus-free isolate that they could compare to wild isolates that harbor the virus to look for biochemical changes. White-nose syndrome is a particularly lethal wildlife disease, killing an estimated 6 million bats in North America since it was identified in 2006. The disease, caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, first was found in New York and now has spread to 29 states and four Canadian provinces. Although several species of bats have been affected, some of the most prevalent species in the Northeast -- such as little brown bats -- have suffered estimated mortality as high as 99 percent. These losses have serious ecological implications. For instance, bats have a voracious appetite for insects and are credited with helping to control populations of mosquitoes and some agricultural pests. P. destructans is clonal, meaning it is essentially identical everywhere it has been found in North America, making it difficult to determine how it is moving, but the virus it harbors has quite a bit of variation. All the fungal isolates from Pennsylvania that were analyzed all had the viruses that were similar,but those viruses differ from the ones found in isolates from Canada, New York and so. forth. The differences in the viruses reflect the movement of the fungus, and this viral variability would give a clearer picture of how the disease is spreading.