Arenavirus discovered as cause of haemorrhagic fever outbreak in South Africa and Zambia

Thursday, June 4, 2009 - 08:01 in Health & Medicine

Scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases of National Health Laboratory Service (NICD-NHLS), the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and Roche's 454 Life Sciences Corporation have discovered the new virus responsible for a highly fatal haemorrhagic fever outbreak in Zambia and South Africa in late 2008. It is the first new haemorrhagic fever-associated arenavirus from Africa identified in nearly four decades. A detailed genetic analysis of this novel arenavirus, named Lujo virus, after the sites of the outbreak (Lusaka, Zambia, and Johannesburg, South Africa) is published online in PLoS Pathogens...

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