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Parasites & Vectors Sep 2021Bats are hosts for many ectoparasites and act as reservoirs for several infectious agents, some of which exhibit zoonotic potential. Here, species of bats and bat flies...
BACKGROUND
Bats are hosts for many ectoparasites and act as reservoirs for several infectious agents, some of which exhibit zoonotic potential. Here, species of bats and bat flies were identified and screened for microorganisms that could be mediated by bat flies.
METHODS
Bat species were identified on the basis of their morphological characteristics. Bat flies associated with bat species were initially morphologically identified and further identified at the genus level by analyzing the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene. Different vector-borne pathogens and endosymbionts were screened using PCR to assess all possible relationships among bats, parasitic bat flies, and their associated organisms.
RESULTS
Seventy-four bat flies were collected from 198 bats; 66 of these belonged to Nycteribiidae and eight to Streblidae families. All Streblidae bat flies were hosted by Rhinolophus ferrumequinum, known as the most common Korean bat. Among the 74 tested bat flies, PCR and nucleotide sequencing data showed that 35 (47.3%) and 20 (27.0%) carried Wolbachia and Bartonella bacteria, respectively, whereas tests for Anaplasma, Borrelia, Hepatozoon, Babesia, Theileria, and Coxiella were negative. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that Wolbachia endosymbionts belonged to two different supergroups, A and F. One sequence of Bartonella was identical to that of Bartonella isolated from Taiwanese bats.
CONCLUSIONS
The vectorial role of bat flies should be checked by testing the same pathogen and bacterial organisms by collecting blood from host bats. This study is of great interest in the fields of disease ecology and public health owing to the bats' potential to transmit pathogens to humans and/or livestock.
Topics: Animals; Bacteria; Chiroptera; Diptera; Disease Reservoirs; Disease Vectors; Female; Genetic Variation; Male; Parasites; Phylogeny; Republic of Korea; Sequence Analysis, DNA
PubMed: 34579766
DOI: 10.1186/s13071-021-05016-6 -
Viruses Nov 2020Within the past two decades, three zoonotic betacoronaviruses have been associated with outbreaks causing severe respiratory disease in humans. Of these, Middle East... (Review)
Review
Within the past two decades, three zoonotic betacoronaviruses have been associated with outbreaks causing severe respiratory disease in humans. Of these, Middle East respiratory s yndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is the only zoonotic coronavirus that is known to consistently result in frequent zoonotic spillover events from the proximate reservoir host-the dromedary camel. A comprehensive understanding of infection in dromedaries is critical to informing public health recommendations and implementing intervention strategies to mitigate spillover events. Experimental models of reservoir disease are absolutely critical in understanding the pathogenesis and transmission, and are key to testing potential dromedary vaccines against MERS-CoV. In this review, we describe experimental infections of dromedary camels as well as additional camelid models used to further understand the camel's role in MERS-CoV spillover to humans.
Topics: Animals; Camelus; Coronavirus Infections; Disease Reservoirs; Humans; Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus; Models, Biological; Vaccination; Virus Shedding; Zoonoses
PubMed: 33266124
DOI: 10.3390/v12121370 -
American Journal of Veterinary Research Jun 2024Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious health issue shared across all One Health domains. Wildlife species represent a key intersection of the animal and...
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious health issue shared across all One Health domains. Wildlife species represent a key intersection of the animal and environmental domains. They are a relevant but understudied reservoir and route of spread for AMR throughout the environment. Most wildlife AMR research thus far has focused on avian species, terrestrial mammals, and a selection of aquatic and marine species. Pathogens often identified in terrestrial wildlife include enteric zoonotic organisms such as Eschericia coli and Salmonella spp, in addition to nonenterics such as Staphylococci. Resistances have been commonly identified to antimicrobials important in veterinary and human medicine, including β-lactams, tetracyclines, aminoglycosides, and macrolides. Our emerging understanding of the dynamics of AMR distribution across life on Earth provides further opportunities for us to assess the risk it poses to veterinary and human health. Future work will require prioritizing which wildlife most exacerbates and indicates AMR in domestic animals. However, decreasing prices and increasing ease for metagenomic sequencing allows for synergies with expanding wildlife viral disease surveillance. Improved understanding of how wildlife impacts veterinary and human healthcare may increase opportunities for related research funding and global equity in such research. The companion Currents in One Health article by Vezeau and Kahn, JAVMA, June 2024, addresses in further detail the routes of spread of AMR across different animal populations and actions that can be taken to mitigate AMR with special consideration for wildlife sources.
Topics: Animals; Animals, Wild; Drug Resistance, Bacterial; Disease Reservoirs; Anti-Bacterial Agents; Humans; Zoonoses
PubMed: 38640951
DOI: 10.2460/ajvr.24.02.0040 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Jun 2015The increasing frequency of zoonotic disease events underscores a need to develop forecasting tools toward a more preemptive approach to outbreak investigation. We apply...
The increasing frequency of zoonotic disease events underscores a need to develop forecasting tools toward a more preemptive approach to outbreak investigation. We apply machine learning to data describing the traits and zoonotic pathogen diversity of the most speciose group of mammals, the rodents, which also comprise a disproportionate number of zoonotic disease reservoirs. Our models predict reservoir status in this group with over 90% accuracy, identifying species with high probabilities of harboring undiscovered zoonotic pathogens based on trait profiles that may serve as rules of thumb to distinguish reservoirs from nonreservoir species. Key predictors of zoonotic reservoirs include biogeographical properties, such as range size, as well as intrinsic host traits associated with lifetime reproductive output. Predicted hotspots of novel rodent reservoir diversity occur in the Middle East and Central Asia and the Midwestern United States.
Topics: Age Factors; Animals; Artificial Intelligence; Computational Biology; Disease Reservoirs; Forecasting; Geographic Mapping; Geography; Humans; Population Density; Public Health; Regression Analysis; Reproduction; Rodentia; Sexual Maturation; Species Specificity; Zoonoses
PubMed: 26038558
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1501598112 -
PLoS Biology Apr 2021Identifying the animal reservoirs from which zoonotic viruses will likely emerge is central to understanding the determinants of disease emergence. Accordingly, there...
Identifying the animal reservoirs from which zoonotic viruses will likely emerge is central to understanding the determinants of disease emergence. Accordingly, there has been an increase in studies attempting zoonotic "risk assessment." Herein, we demonstrate that the virological data on which these analyses are conducted are incomplete, biased, and rapidly changing with ongoing virus discovery. Together, these shortcomings suggest that attempts to assess zoonotic risk using available virological data are likely to be inaccurate and largely only identify those host taxa that have been studied most extensively. We suggest that virus surveillance at the human-animal interface may be more productive.
Topics: Animals; Biodiversity; Disease Reservoirs; Environmental Monitoring; Host Specificity; Humans; Metagenomics; Phylogeny; Risk Assessment; Risk Factors; Selection Bias; Virus Diseases; Viruses; Zoonoses
PubMed: 33878111
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001135 -
Medecine Sciences : M/S 2020
Topics: Adult; Animals; Bacterial Infections; Betacoronavirus; COVID-19; Cattle; Chiroptera; Communicable Diseases, Emerging; Coronavirus Infections; Disease Reservoirs; Dogs; Epidemics; History, 18th Century; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; History, Ancient; Humans; Life Expectancy; Longevity; Pandemics; Pneumonia, Viral; SARS-CoV-2; Sheep; Swine; Virus Diseases; Zoonoses
PubMed: 32530418
DOI: 10.1051/medsci/2020111 -
Virulence Dec 2020Ongoing with current combinations of antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection can successfully maintain long-term... (Review)
Review
Ongoing with current combinations of antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection can successfully maintain long-term suppression of HIV-1 replication in plasma. Still, none of these therapies is capable of extinguishing the virus from the long-lived cellular reservoir, including monocyte-derived macrophages (MDM), that means the principal obstacle to HIV cure. MDM are widely distributed in all tissues and organs, including central system nervous (CNS) where they represent the most frequent HIV-infected cells that means the principal obstacle to HIV cure. Current FDA-approved antiretroviral drugs target viral reverse transcriptase, protease, integrase, and entry processes (coreceptor or fusion blockade). It is desirable to continue to develop new antiretrovirals directed against alternative targets in the virus lifecycle in order to further optimize therapeutic options, overcome resistance to existing medications, and potentially contribute to the elimination of viral reservoirs.This review provides a comprehensive overview of the activity of antiretroviral drugs (classical and upcoming) in monocytes-derived macrophages (MDM). Defining the antiviral activity of these drugs in this important cellular HIV-1 reservoir provides crucial hints about their efficacy in HIV-1 infected patients.
Topics: Animals; Anti-Retroviral Agents; Central Nervous System; Clinical Trials as Topic; Disease Reservoirs; HIV Infections; HIV-1; Humans; Macrophages; Mice; Virus Replication
PubMed: 32375558
DOI: 10.1080/21505594.2020.1760443 -
Viruses Apr 2021The emergence of the Zika virus (ZIKV) mirrors its evolutionary nature and, thus, its ability to grow in diversity or complexity (i.e., related to genome, host response,... (Review)
Review
The emergence of the Zika virus (ZIKV) mirrors its evolutionary nature and, thus, its ability to grow in diversity or complexity (i.e., related to genome, host response, environment changes, tropism, and pathogenicity), leading to it recently joining the circle of closed congenital pathogens. The causal relation of ZIKV to microcephaly is still a much-debated issue. The identification of outbreak foci being in certain endemic urban areas characterized by a high-density population emphasizes that mixed infections might spearhead the recent appearance of a wide range of diseases that were initially attributed to ZIKV. Globally, such coinfections may have both positive and negative effects on viral replication, tropism, host response, and the viral genome. In other words, the possibility of coinfection may necessitate revisiting what is considered to be known regarding the pathogenesis and epidemiology of ZIKV diseases. ZIKV viral coinfections are already being reported with other arboviruses (e.g., chikungunya virus (CHIKV) and dengue virus (DENV)) as well as congenital pathogens (e.g., human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and cytomegalovirus (HCMV)). However, descriptions of human latent viruses and their impacts on ZIKV disease outcomes in hosts are currently lacking. This review proposes to select some interesting human latent viruses (i.e., herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6), human parvovirus B19 (B19V), and human papillomavirus (HPV)), whose virological features and co-exposition with ZIKV may provide evidence of the syndemism process, shedding some light on the emergence of the ZIKV-induced global congenital syndrome in South America.
Topics: Biological Coevolution; Coinfection; Disease Reservoirs; Humans; Microcephaly; South America; Viral Tropism; Virus Diseases; Virus Latency; Virus Replication; Zika Virus; Zika Virus Infection
PubMed: 33924398
DOI: 10.3390/v13040669 -
Trends in Microbiology Mar 2015The ongoing West African Ebola epidemic highlights a recurring trend in the zoonotic emergence of virulent pathogens likely to come from bat reservoirs that has caused... (Review)
Review
The ongoing West African Ebola epidemic highlights a recurring trend in the zoonotic emergence of virulent pathogens likely to come from bat reservoirs that has caused epidemiologists to ask 'Are bats special reservoirs for emerging zoonotic pathogens?' We collate evidence from the past decade to delineate mitochondrial mechanisms of bat physiology that have evolved to mitigate oxidative stress incurred during metabolically costly activities such as flight. We further describe how such mechanisms might have generated pleiotropic effects responsible for tumor mitigation and pathogen control in bat hosts. These synergisms may enable 'special' tolerance of intracellular pathogens in bat hosts; paradoxically, this may leave them more susceptible to immunopathological morbidity when attempting to clear extracellular infections such as 'white-nose syndrome' (WNS).
Topics: Animals; Chiroptera; Disease Reservoirs; Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola; Mitochondria; Zoonoses
PubMed: 25572882
DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2014.12.004 -
Viruses Feb 2022Recombination creates mosaic genomes containing regions with mixed ancestry, and the accumulation of such events over time can complicate greatly many aspects of...
Recombination creates mosaic genomes containing regions with mixed ancestry, and the accumulation of such events over time can complicate greatly many aspects of evolutionary inference. Here, we developed a sliding window bootstrap (SWB) method to generate genomic bootstrap (GB) barcodes to highlight the regions supporting phylogenetic relationships. The method was applied to an alignment of 56 sarbecoviruses, including SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, responsible for the SARS epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. The SWB analyses were also used to construct a consensus tree showing the most reliable relationships and better interpret hidden phylogenetic signals. Our results revealed that most relationships were supported by just a few genomic regions and confirmed that three divergent lineages could be found in bats from Yunnan: , which groups SARS-CoV related coronaviruses from China; , which includes SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses from Southeast Asia and Yunnan; and , which contains a few highly divergent viruses recently described in Yunnan. The GB barcodes showed evidence for ancient recombination between and genomes, as well as more recent recombination events between and genomes. The recombination and phylogeographic patterns suggest a strong host-dependent selection of the viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. In addition, SARS-CoV-2 appears as a mosaic genome composed of regions sharing recent ancestry with three bat s from Yunnan (RmYN02, RpYN06, and RaTG13) or related to more ancient ancestors in bats from Yunnan and Southeast Asia. Finally, our results suggest that viral circular RNAs may be key molecules for the mechanism of recombination.
Topics: Animals; China; Chiroptera; DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic; Disease Reservoirs; Evolution, Molecular; Genome, Viral; Genomics; Phylogeography; Recombination, Genetic; Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus; SARS-CoV-2
PubMed: 35216033
DOI: 10.3390/v14020440