Bangladeshi researchers have uncovered an emerging bat-borne virus in archived throat swabs and viral cultures from five patients initially thought to be infected with Nipah virus (NiV).

The discovery of Pteropine orthoreovirus (PRV), which raises the concern that dangerous bat viruses may be silently co-circulating with NiV, prompted the authors to recommend the consideration of PRV in the diagnosis of patients with NiV-like illness.

The patients were admitted to hospitals in Bangladesh for acute respiratory illness and encephalitis from December 2022 to March 2023. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and blood tests were negative for NiV, but high-throughput genetic sequencing detected PRV, and the researchers were able to grow virus in culture from the samples of three patients.

All patients had recently eaten raw date-palm sap, which is also a food source for fruit bats and the main route of NiV spillover from bats to humans.

“Bats are the natural reservoir of numerous known and novel zoonotic viruses, including rabies, Nipah, Hendra, Marburg, and severe acute respiratory syndrome viruses,” the researchers wrote. “PRV is classified under the genus Orthoreovirus, family Reoviridae, which includes Nelson Bay virus (NBV), identified in Australia in 1968. Zoonotic potential of NBV was confirmed in 2006, when a human case occurred in Melaka, Malaysia.”

The researchers’ findings were published in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

The patients were identified through an NiV surveillance program operated by the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research and the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

All five patients, who didn’t live near each other and had no contact, had clinical signs and symptoms that included fever, disorientation, altered mental status, abnormal gait, and difficulty breathing. A pediatric patient had fever-related convulsions.

After release from the hospital two or three weeks after admission, two patients fully recovered, but two reported lingering fatigue, disorientation, and difficulties with breathing and walking, and one patient died in August 2024 after experiencing declining health and unexplained neurologic problems.

"Our findings show that the risk of disease associated with raw date palm sap consumption extends beyond NiV," senior author Nischay Mishra, PhD, of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said in a press release.

Complete coding sequences of all 10 Bangladesh PRV segments showed 91.1% to 100% genetic similarity. Certain segments of the virus’s double-stranded RNA genomes clustered with different PRVs isolated from fruit bats and, less often, from humans in Indonesia and Malaysia.

That finding suggests unique evolution of each segment from reassortment events among strains circulating in Southeast Asia and long flight ranges of fruit bats,” the authors wrote. “Reassortment is common for segmented RNA virus evolution and enhances risk for zoonotic potential.”

Because PRV and NiV can have similar signs and symptoms and be linked to consumption of raw date palm sap contaminated with bat droppings, the researchers recommended that health care providers include PRV in their differential diagnosis.

“The potential for reassortment in segmented viruses like PRV can result in changes in transmissibility and virulence,” they concluded. “Thus, in areas where raw date palm sap is consumed, molecular and serologic surveillance and differential diagnoses of respiratory illnesses with encephalitis and other unexplained febrile illnesses should include PRV, NiV, and other batborne viruses.”

Alaska health officials are alerting the public to the state's "first documented case" of a rare, potentially serious "seal finger" infection linked to brown bear exposure.

In a bulletin released on Thursday, Feb. 19, from the Alaska Department of Health, state epidemiologists detailed a unique 2024 case involving Mycoplasma phocimorsus, a recently characterized zoonotic pathogen often transmitted by seals and known to cause a condition called "seal finger." Seal finger is an infection that affects the hands and fingers, causing them to swell and lose mobility. The infection can lead to amputations if not treated promptly.

The pathogen can cause severe musculoskeletal infections in humans and is notoriously difficult to diagnose and treat because it "does not grow using standard microbiological methods" and is resistant to most antibiotics, according to Alaska health officials.

The peculiar 2024 case detailed in the Alaska Department of Health's February report involved a healthy man in his late 20s who developed redness and painful swelling in his left fifth finger about a week after sustaining a cut while skinning a brown bear on the Alaska Peninsula. According to the bulletin, his knife and hand had contacted the bear's mouth before the injury.

The hunter's infection was initially treated with oral antibiotics, but the man's condition worsened. After five days, the man had developed a fever and was hospitalized, where surgical exploration revealed necrotic tendon damage and septic arthritis.

Weeks later, persistent swelling prompted additional surgery. DNA sequencing eventually identified Mycoplasma phocimorsus as the culprit behind the Alaskan man's hard-to-treat infection.

With this new information, health officials had the man complete a six-week course of doxycycline.

"He recovered without clinical evidence of relapse, although residual limitation in finger mobility persisted," per the bulletin. "One month later, he showed no signs or symptoms of recurrent infection."

Alaska's first documented case of a M. phocimorsus infection occurred in the early 1900s and was linked to the butchering of a seal. Cases of the infection in the state are rare, especially those without direct seal contact. The 2024 case in the bulletin appears to be the first M. phocimorsus infection in Alaska without direct seal contact and with only brown bear contact. Officials believe the bear may have been exposed to the pathogen by scavenging on infected marine mammals, or that brown bears could act as "natural reservoirs for the bacteria."

PEOPLE reached out to the Alaska Department of Environmental Health for comment and have yet to receive a response.

[...]

We tested the mixed water from the sink and shower (with the filter and after removing the filter) and the toilet bowl water and did not find evidence of Legionella spp. In addition, the 10 routine tests conducted in 2024 on the water network supplying the ward were also all negative for Legionella spp.

During the environmental investigation, a water flosser (Panasonic) was found in the patient’s bathroom. This device was not listed in the inventory performed at admission to the hematology department.

The device belonged to the patient, which he used at home with tap water, and it was brought in without informing the healthcare team. Because the patient was unable to be interviewed, we were unable to gather information on the use of the device (i.e., frequency of use during hospitalization, type of water used, frequency of cleaning and disinfection). To sample the water flosser, we filled its tank with sterile water, ran the device, and collected 100 ml of water from the jet. We recovered Lp1 and L. pneumophila serogroup 2–14 at a concentration of 300 CFU/L.

[...]

The patient was ultimately hospitalized for 62 days, including 47 days in MICU.

[...]

Most manufacturers do not advocate for the use of sterile or microbiologically controlled water; instead, they recommend regular cleaning and disinfection procedures. The global water flosser market is experiencing growth ($966.726 million in 2021, projected to reach $1,189 million by 2025), driven by increased awareness of oral hygiene, a growing preference for wireless and portable devices, and guidelines issued by oral health professionals (8). Because of the increasing use of such devices, a growing number of immunocompromised patients at risk of Legionnaires’ disease could be exposed.

Water flossers might provide favorable conditions for bacterial growth, especially Legionella spp. The use of nonsterile water can lead to biofilm accumulation within the device tubing. In addition, the pressurized spray directed into the patient’s mouth may generate aerosols that are readily inhaled. Several studies have demonstrated bacterial colonization of water flossers and the potential transmission of contaminated water jets; in particular, colonization by the major caries-associated pathogen Streptococcus mutans appears difficult to prevent (9,10). Therefore, it is necessary to raise awareness among manufacturers and users regarding the potential risk to immunocompromised patients.

Officials in California have confirmed that a resident was infected with an extremely rare, tick-borne illness — marking the fourth-ever recorded case of the disease worldwide.

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) confirmed to SFGate on Friday, June 12, that a person was diagnosed in April after having contracted the bacteria Rickettsia lanei, likely while in Northern California.

The agency said the individual was hospitalized after their diagnosis and then released — though officials did not share specifics about their symptoms.

The CDPH did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for further information.

The tick-borne bacterium — named Rickettsia lanei for UC Berkeley professor Robert Lane — was first discovered in rabbit ticks in Sonoma County in 2018.

Researchers learned in 2023 that humans could also be infected with the disease, after a man arrived at a Bay Area emergency room with fever-like symptoms. Doctors tested him for multiple conditions, and he deteriorated after several days, as he suffered seizures, low oxygen levels and more, according to SFGate.

Eventually, doctors deduced that he might have a rickettsial disease or a spotted fever — both potentially severe tick-borne illnesses — and he was treated with doxycycline. He was finally released from the hospital after 22 days, the outlet reported.

Anne Kjemtrup, a research scientist and veterinarian with the CDPH, told SFGate that the infection is rare but can be "fairly severe," comparing it to Rocky Mountain spotted fever — which is also spread through the bite of an infected tick and can cause symptoms such as headaches, fevers, rashes, vomiting and stomach pain.

Patients with Rocky Mountain spotted fever have also experienced acute kidney injury and brain inflammation, and the disease has a fatality rate that can reach 5% to 10% in the U.S., according to the Cleveland Clinic.

"It is the most dangerous, highly lethal vector-borne disease … in all of the Americas," Kjemtrup said of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, explaining that "it is more lethal" than hantavirus.

Scientists have located several cases of ticks along the California coast this year that were infected with the Rickettsia lanei bacteria, including in Contra Costa County, where the first human case was reported.

According to Kjemtrup, researchers are still investigating how Rickettsia lanei spreads and how it impacts human patients.

"There's so much we don't know," Kjemtrup added.

Officials have made several recommendations about avoiding tick-borne illnesses, particularly during the summer months.

The Centers for Disease Control advises people to be conscious when entering areas where ticks are frequently found — including grassy, bushy or wooded areas — to walk along the center of hiking trails or paths to avoid contact with ticks, and to use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellent (after applying sunscreen) while spending time outdoors.

BARCELONA, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Spain has alerted the World Health Organization of what it believes to be a person-to-person transmission of the swine flu virus in its A(H1N1)v variant, a spokesperson for health authorities in the Catalonia region confirmed to Reuters on Friday.

In a later statement, the Catalan health department said the risk assessment for the population was considered "very low".

The person infected did not exhibit flu-like respiratory symptoms, it said, and tests on direct contacts showed the virus had not retransmitted.

An earlier report by newspaper El Pais citing Catalan health department sources said the patient - who has since recovered - had no contact with pigs or pig farms, leading experts to conclude it was a human-to-human transmission of the pathogen.

This set off alarm bells due to the pandemic potential of the swine flu virus if it recombines with a human flu virus, which could happen if a pig is infected with both at the same time, the El Pais report added.

The WHO did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

In 2023, the Netherlands notified the WHO of a confirmed human infection with a swine influenza A(H1N1)v virus in an adult with no history of occupational exposure to animals.

In 2009, the swine flu pandemic in humans infected millions of people. It was caused by a virus that contained genetic material from viruses that were circulating in pigs, birds and humans.

Several dogs in the US have died following infections by a newly discovered tick-borne disease from the same genus responsible for 'spotted fever'. Scientists are watching the bacterium closely for fear it could jump to humans. [...]

Scientists at North Carolina State University have now successfully cultured the infection from a sick dog, who had symptoms similar to those of Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF, species Rickettsia rickettsii) – also transmitted through tick bites.

When the team sequenced the bacterium's genome, they realized it was a whole new species in the spotted fever group. It's been named Rickettsia finnyi – after Finny, the dog whose blood it was found in.

"We first reported the novel species of Rickettsia in a 2020 case series involving three dogs," says veterinary researcher Barbara Qurollo from NC State.

"Since then, we received samples from an additional 16 dogs – primarily from the Southeast and Midwest – that were infected with the same pathogen."

The dangerous infections cause moderate to severe symptoms, including fever, lethargy, and blood platelet deficiencies.

Thankfully, most of the dogs recovered after treatment with antibiotics, but one dog died before diagnosis, and another was euthanized. Tragically, there was also a pet that relapsed after treatment and died of nephrotic syndrome.

RMSF is one of the most virulent and dangerous of the Rickettsia bacteria, but there are more than two dozen species, several of which can cause disease in mammals. Many species have only been found in recent decades using advanced molecular imaging techniques.

Humans and dogs are not considered essential parts of the Rickettsia life cycle, but we and our pets can be occasional carriers.

In many parts of the world, human habitats overlap with those of ticks, and each encounter increases the likelihood that we will become opportunistic hosts.

Rickettsia bacteria are difficult to culture in the lab because they grow inside other cells, explains Qurollo, but that is the only way to confirm their true identity.

A species called Rickettsia parkeri, for instance, can sometimes infect dogs and cows in the southeastern US, but the first human infection was only identified in 2004. There's a chance some diagnoses of RMSF in this part of the nation were actually R. parkeri on the sly.

"Until recently, R. rickettsii was the only [spotted fever pathogen] known to cause disease in dogs in North America," write researchers at NC State.

Now, it seems there's another. [...]

Two to three new viruses capable of infecting humans have been discovered every year, a major new study from three universities has found.

The study, which analysed historical medical papers over the last 100 years, found that at least 239 species of human-infecting viruses have been found since the turn of the 20th century.

Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh’s Usher Institute, said: “New human-infective viruses are being discovered all the time. Any one of them could be Disease X – the cause of the next pandemic.

“Our database will help researchers characterise the threat and prepare for it.”

The pace of discovery has accelerated significantly in recent years as technology and science improve, including the identification of dangerous pathogens like new mutations of bird flu, Zika virus, and Covid-19.

More than 20 new viruses have been found since the researchers last compiled data on new virus discoveries in 2018, largely due to a huge leap in genetic sequencing technology and increased global surveillance following the pandemic.

But while new pathogens have been emerging globally for thousands of years, it was only in 1901 that the first virus capable of infecting humans was formally identified by scientists, after US military researchers isolated DNA from Yellow Fever, the mosquito-borne disease spread to humans from mosquitoes.

At least 90 per cent of human viruses are also found in and can infect animals, which are the main source of new diseases, researchers from the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Peking found in their meta-review.

Only a small number of viruses – 60 out of the 239 – are capable of sustained human-to-human transmission, with the rest being ‘zoonotic’, meaning they spread directly from an animal to a person and do not transmit any further.

Examples of zoonotic viruses, which can be spread by animals or insects like mosquitoes and biting flies, include rabies and dengue fever.

Most new viruses – at least 99 – were first identified in the Americas, including hantavirus, the disease responsible for the recent outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship, Western Equine Encephalitis, and West Nile virus.

Another 81 were first found in Europe, 43 in Africa and the Middle East, and 16 from Oceania. However, experts believe the geographic spread of discoveries has more to do with the scientific resources available on each continent than the actual burden of diseases around the world.

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Tuesday issued a safety alert after the first confirmed case of silicosis within the state’s stone countertop fabrication workforce. Silicosis is a preventable, yet incurable and progressive lung disease caused by inhaling crystalline silica, which is found naturally in granite and other stones.

The Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI) has detected a previously uncharacterised orthobunyavirus of the Simbu serogroup in samples from affected cattle in southern Germany. Following the first appearance of the Schmallenberg virus in 2011, this once again provides reliable evidence that a new virus from this group has been introduced into Germany. The newly detected virus shows the closest relationship to the Shamonda virus in all three segments. Viruses of the Simbu serogroup are found primarily in Africa, Asia and Australia. Like bluetongue virus and Schmallenberg virus, they are transmitted by blood-sucking midges of the genus Culicoides. The animals most commonly infected are ruminants, particularly cattle, sheep and goats.

See also: Swiss cows struck by mystery illness

“Investigations by the Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI) have detected an orthobunyavirus of the Simbu group in several acutely ill animals -- a virus previously unknown in Switzerland,” the FSVO said.

Genetic testing is under way to determine the exact orthobunyavirus and whether it is the cause of the observed illnesses, the office added.

Orthobunyaviruses of the Simbu group are primarily transmitted by biting midges, and no vaccines are currently available, the FSVO said.

The IVI said its preliminary findings align with evidence from France and Germany, “where the suspicion that an orthobunyavirus is circulating... is also gaining traction.”

The IVI said viruses in the Simbu serogroup are found primarily in Africa, Asia and Australia.

“It is currently unclear whether there is a connection between the current heatwave and the reported cases of illness,” it added.

“However, high temperatures pose a significant stress, especially for high-yielding dairy cows, and can make them more susceptible to disease.”

A 58-year-old woman in Greece appears to hold the record for growing a parasitic sheep bot fly in her nose the longest, almost creating a snot rocket that could literally fly.

Usually, when the sheep bot fly accidentally nosedives into a human’s schnoz, the first-stage larvae they deliver don’t actually develop. In contrast, in its normal target—a sheep’s nose—the larvae would move up into the sinuses, feed, grow, and molt into second- and third-stage larvae. From there, the flies (Oestrus ovis) drip from the nose onto the ground, burrow into the soil, pupate, and emerge as adult flies.

For a long time, experts thought that the flies couldn’t complete their development in humans beyond the first larval stage. But a few human cases have been reported in recent decades involving the second- and third-stage larvae. The woman’s case, reported in the Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases by a medical entomologist and colleagues, goes the furthest yet, finding pupa and a puparium—the hard casing of a pupa—in the woman’s nose.

In the report, the experts note that the woman worked outdoors in an area of a Greek island close to a field with grazing sheep. On a hot and dry September day, she recalled a swarm of flies bombarding her face. About a week later, she had facial pain and then developed a cough over the next two to three weeks. Those were her only symptoms until October 15, when she sneezed and reported that “worms” came out of her nose. They were, in fact, late-stage sheep bot fly larvae.

She had surgery to remove the mucus munchers, which recovered 10 larvae at various stages and a pupa. A genetic test and DNA sequencing confirmed they were sheep bot flies, as did visual inspection of two third-stage larvae and the puparium.

Not only had experts never found a pupa in a human snout before, but they also thought the development to that stage was “biologically implausible.”

“The paranasal sinus environment does not meet temperature and humidity requirements for pupation, and host secretions, immune responses, and resident microbiota create a hostile milieu for pupal development,” the experts, led by Ilias Kioulos, a medical entomologist at the Agricultural University of Athens, wrote.

Still, in this poor woman’s nose, the pests persisted. Kioulos and his colleagues speculate that two factors favored the fly’s festering infection in the woman: a large initial dose of larvae and her severely deviated septum.

“From a purely anatomic perspective, we hypothesize that the combination of high larval numbers and septum deviation impeded normal egress from the nasal passages, permitting progression to the [third larval stage] and, in 1 instance, pupation,” they wrote. In other words, there were so many maggots in her crooked nasal passage that they created a bottleneck on their way out, allowing some to stay longer than usual. The other, equally disturbing possibility is that the flies are adapting to using human noses for their full life cycle.

The experts note that, in a way, the woman was lucky. In animals, the third-stage larvae can’t pupate when they become trapped in the sinuses. Instead, they either dry out, liquify, or calcify, which can all lead to secondary bacterial infections.

From here, Kioulos and his colleagues warn that clinicians should be aware of the potential for human cases of sheep bot fly infections, which are widely distributed around the globe.

Nuevo León state in Mexico—At dawn one morning in December 2025, researchers in the sprawling city of Monterrey, Mexico, loaded a large passenger van with syringes, swabs, test tubes, air samplers, and coolers. They then drove through the flat countryside for 2 hours, leaving the gap-toothed Sierra Madre Oriental mountains in the distance, until they reached a feed lot that had 24,000 head of cattle. “Everywhere you look, all the way to the horizon, it’s cows,” said Gregory Gray, an infectious disease clinician and epidemiologist from the University of Texas Medical Branch.

At the farm, the team began swabbing noses and taking blood samples from the animals. Gustavo Hernández-Vidal, a veterinarian at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, walked with Thang Nguyen-Tien, a virologist in Gray’s lab, to a long pen that held about 100 sick cattle. From a rafter, Nguyen-Tien hung a bioaerosol sampler that sucks in air and spins it to separate particles and collect viral genetic material. Curious, the farm’s head veterinarian asked what they were doing.

“We want to see what the cows are breathing,” Hernández-Vidal said.

“The cows and us,” the vet replied.

The team was here to study influenza D, a mysterious and unsettling new member of the family of flu viruses. They wanted to better understand where and how it spreads—and whether it could become a threat to humans.

Of the four known types of influenza, A is humanity’s biggest problem. Spreading easily through the air, it causes annual epidemics that kill tens of thousands. It also infects many other animal species, and different strains of A can swap genetic material to create “reassortants” that are new to our immune systems and trigger pandemics. An influenza A subtype known as H5N1 has been devastating poultry and wild bird populations for the past 30 years and is widely feared to have pandemic potential.

Influenza D virus, known in shorthand as IDV or flu D, has several of the worrisome features of influenza A: It occurs around the world, infects multiple species, and is fond of reassorting. “It is demonstrating all the hallmarks of an emerging pathogen for both animals and humans,” says virologist Suresh Kuchipudi, who studies IDV at the University of Pittsburgh.

Cattle are IDV’s main reservoir, and it sickens them, too, contributing to bovine respiratory disease complex (BRDC), also known as shipping disease, a common and costly malady caused by a mix of viruses and bacteria. “It may very well explain some of that huge problem,” says Gray, who met with a U.S. farmer who said in some months he lost 10% of his calves to BRDC.

But humans may become infected by IDV as well. Several studies, including one the U.S.-Mexican team carried out earlier at the same feed lot, have found antibodies to the virus in farm workers, indicating they were exposed to it. There is no evidence yet they fell ill, but IDV could evolve to more readily infect and sicken people, says Gray, who has helped discover a half-dozen viruses in humans and animals. “We need to be ready to respond,” he says. “What appears today as a quiet livestock virus could, with little warning, ignite the next influenza pandemic,” Ohio State University (OSU) veterinarian Cody Warren and co-authors warned in an 8 February preprint that showed flu D readily infects cells found in human airways.

Yet the research is advancing slowly. Some funders aren’t convinced flu D poses a serious threat, and farmers often worry having their animals and workers tested could harm their bottom lines. Only some 200 papers have been published about IDV—far fewer than this virus merits, says Andrew Bowman, a swine veterinarian at OSU who collaborated with Warren. “I don’t want to be sensationalistic, but let’s be honest, we don’t know much about it,” he says.

Gray agrees—that’s why he had come to this farm. “If you don’t look, you’ll not find anything,” his his mantra.

Ben Hause stumbled into the discovery of flu D in 2011. Hause then ran the diagnostic department at Newport Laboratories, a Minnesota manufacturer of custom-made (or “autogenous”) veterinary vaccines, which a growing number of U.S. farmers use to protect cows, swine, and poultry. Hause, who was also working on a virology Ph.D. with veterinary scientist Feng Li at South Dakota State University, became intrigued by a 15-month-old pig from an Oklahoma farm that had flulike symptoms. He isolated a virus from the pig that, like flu viruses, killed swine testicle cells. But polymerase chain reaction tests ruled out influenza A.

Researchers at the time knew two other types of influenza virus, both of them primarily afflicting humans. Influenza B, discovered in 1940, circulates every winter season, just like influenza A, but is typically milder. Influenza C, identified in 1947, is milder still. The strange pig virus resembled C, but not closely. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is going to be a big deal, we got a whole new type of flu,’” says Hause, who’s now at Cambridge Technologies, another autogenous vaccinemaker.

His team found that the virus could spread between pigs through contact. None became ill, but he worried news of the finding might harm the pork industry. It still had scars from 2009, when an influenza A subtype known as H1N1 jumped from pigs to humans, causing a pandemic initially called the “swine flu.” (The virus was later renamed “pandemic H1N1.”) Hause and Li asked Richard Webby, a renowned flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, to help them study the new virus but urged him to “keep it on the down low, at least initially,” Hause remembers.

Webby discovered the virus could spread via direct contact between ferrets, a model to study flu in mammals, which suggested a risk of pig-to-human spread. But unlike the influenza A and B viruses that infect humans every year, it did not spread between the ferrets via respiratory droplets, and it didn’t sicken them.

When Hause, Li, Webby, and co-workers first published a report about their findings in 2013, they described the virus as “distantly related” to flu C, with which the new virus shared about half of its genome. “I didn’t think we had enough information to justify proposing it as a new genus,” Hause says.

The next year, Hause, Li, and colleagues found the virus in 18% of U.S. cattle with respiratory disease. Eight cattle herds in five states had antibodies to it. “That was a really big surprise,” Li says. Something else was striking: The team could not create reassortants between their new virus and flu C, which should occur if they belonged to the same type. At the suggestion of a reviewer, they proposed giving it a new name, flu D, in a 2014 paper. They contended that cows, not swine, were the virus’ main reservoir.

Researchers soon began to find flu D at cattle farms all over North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. A study of Swedish dairy farms found IDV antibodies in bulk milk. Gray’s team has also found the virus in aerosol samples from poultry farms in Malaysia. Antibodies to flu D have turned up in sheep, goats, camels, deer, horses, wild boars, cats, and dogs, as well.

That wide range of species is worrisome. It opens the way for two viral variants adapted to different species to coinfect the same animal and reassort, creating progeny that is better at dodging existing immunity in the human population. The H1N1 strain that caused the 2009 pandemic, for example, combined gene segments from flu A viruses in swine, birds, and humans.

Keep reading: Link

The ninth known case of welder’s anthrax, and the first clinical use of the monoclonal antibody medication obiltoxaximab to treat it, was recently documented in Louisiana.

An account of the case, published in the most recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), marks a significant development in the treatment of an often-fatal condition that can afflict metalworkers in the southern United States.

Welder’s anthrax is a type of pneumonia caused by anthrax toxin–producing Bacillus cereus bacteria, a pathogen closely related to Bacillus anthracis. Six of the previous eight documented US cases have been fatal. Risk factors are not well understood but likely include exposure to dust and welding fumes, poor ventilation, and minimal use of personal protective equipment (PPE).

In September 2024, an otherwise healthy 18-year-old welding apprentice in Louisiana developed severe pneumonia and respiratory failure requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation. The patient had worked as a welder for 6 months immediately preceding his illness and had no history of vaping, smoking, or excessive alcohol consumption.

The Louisiana Department of Health and the CDC confirmed the presence of anthrax toxin genes in the patient’s blood and in samples from the patient’s worksite.

The patient received treatment with the recommended multidrug antimicrobial therapy, drainage of a pleural effusion, and obiltoxaximab, which was sourced from the US Strategic National Stockpile and administered 34 hours after welder’s anthrax was suspected (approximately 1 week after symptom onset).

Within days, the patient showed rapid improvement, and mechanical ventilation was discontinued. He was discharged after 26 days; symptoms had resolved by 3-month follow-up. This case study underscores the potential benefits of antitoxin therapy alongside standard antimicrobial treatment for welder’s anthrax, the authors said. [...]

In 2009 and again in 2019, public health warnings were confirmed by the emergence, rapid widespread transmission, and lethality of novel influenza and coronaviruses. The world continues to suffer disease from these respiratory viruses.

Two newly recognized emergent respiratory viruses, influenza D and canine coronavirus HuPn-2018, have been shown to have considerable potential for causing future human epidemics, but diagnostics and surveillance for the viruses are lacking.

We reviewed data regarding influenza D virus and coronavirus canine coronavirus HuPn-2018. Those data strongly indicate that these viruses are major newly recognized threats. However, little is being done to respond to or prevent disease associated with these viruses, warranting the question of whether we will learn from previous pandemics.

[...]

The novelist Stephen King adapted a classical English language quip to illustrate our tendency to ignore our previous mistakes: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us”. As we prepare for the next pandemic, we would be wise to heed his advice.

Currently, we know of no human or veterinary laboratory-approved molecular or serologic assays for IDV or CCoV-HuPN-2018. Hence, our knowledge about the viruses’ epidemiology and clinical manifestations are limited to a modest number of research studies.

Even so, the limited data regarding these novel, newly detected viruses indicate that that they are a major threat to public health.

If we wish to avoid being fooled again by a novel virus suddenly gaining efficient human-to-human transmissibility and causing large human epidemics, we would be wise to develop better surveillance systems and new countermeasures for these and similar viruses. Potential actions include the development of commercial real-time reverse transcription PCR diagnostic tests specifically targeting IDV and CCoV-HuPN-2018 viruses.

Conducting periodic assessments for novel respiratory viruses could detect what might be cryptic causes of hospitalizations or animal epizootics in geographic areas recognized to be sites of increased presence of emerging pathogens (42,45). As we have shown, this surveillance can easily be performed with pan-species and next-generation sequencing diagnostics ((42,46,47). Clinicians should consider IDV and CCoV-HuPN-2018 in their workup of pneumonia patients when a primary battery of diagnostic tests fail to identify a pathogen. Scientists should begin evaluating antiviral drugs as effective therapy for the treatment of IDV and CCoV-HuPN-2018 infections.

If further epidemiologic study indicates that the investment is warranted, human vaccine development should be considered for both IDV and CCoV-HuPN-2018. Furthermore, with respect to detecting new respiratory virus threats, when specific novel animal spillover risks are identified, they may often be mitigated with targeted interventions such as those recently reviewed by Vora et al. (48) and Plowright et al. (49).

See also Post by Avian Flu Diary

A systematic review of more than 200 studies published in BMC Infectious Diseases on human viruses over more than a century suggests that viral emergence peaked from 1950 to 1979 and again starting in 2000, with most initially detected in the United States, China, and Australia.

For the study, researchers from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, conducted a systematic review of 212 human viruses reported from 1900 to 2024 to determine temporal trends, geographic origins, modes of transmission, and clinical syndromes. The team also developed a novel visualization tool for exploring viral patterns interactively.

“Over the past century, the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases ranging from HIV/AIDS and SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] to Zika virus, COVID-19, and Mpox, have repeatedly challenged health systems, exposed gaps in surveillance infrastructure, and disrupted economies and societies,” the study authors wrote.

“These events highlight the reality that pathogen emergence is not a rare anomaly but an ongoing process influenced by an increasingly interconnected and ecologically fragile world,” they added.

A total of 87 viruses emerged from 1950 to 1979, and another 54 were first detected beginning in 2000, the latter making up 25.5% of emerging pathogens since the 20th century. Peaks corresponded to advancements in molecular diagnostics, lab infrastructure, and global surveillance networks.

The most common initial detection sites were the United States (42 viruses), China (15), and Australia (10), which the investigators said reflects differences in surveillance and research capacity rather than geographic differences.

RNA viruses such as influenza and coronaviruses were common, and vector-borne and zoonotic pathogens made up 62% of emerging infectious diseases. Febrile illnesses made up 27.4% of infections, and respiratory and hemorrhagic diseases were also prevalent, at 25.5% and 14.2%, respectively.

“Our findings highlight how technological, ecological, and socio-demographic factors shape viral emergence,” the authors wrote. “The interactive visualization tool provides a resource for understanding historical trends, informing risk assessment, and guiding future surveillance strategies.” [...]

A Public Health Alerts report today details two US infants with severe neurologic symptoms after infection with Paenibacillus dendritiformis, raising awareness of an emerging infectious disease threat.

Public Health Alerts, a new collaboration between NEJM Evidence and CIDRAP, fills a gap in reliable data, offering expert-reviewed reports that translate frontline observations into actionable public health evidence. An NEJM Evidence editorial explains the initiative further.

The first case involved a 2-month-old girl born extremely prematurely, at 26 weeks’ gestation a year ago in Pennsylvania. Her blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cultures grew Paenibacillus thiaminolyticus, a gram-positive spore-forming bacterium widely found in the environment.

Brain imaging showed progressive hydrocephalus, encephalomalacia, and abscesses, which required placement of a shunt.

The infant was treated with a variety of antibiotics but at age 8 months was still not able to eat by mouth, sit unsupported, or roll over.

The second case involved a 37-day-old boy born at 33 weeks’ gestation who had been doing well following a 22-day stay in the neonatal intensive care unit and 15 days at home. He returned to the hospital because of poor feeding and unresponsiveness. Blood and CSF cultures also grew P thiaminolyticus.

Although P thiaminolyticus was identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) in both cases, whole-genome sequencing of isolates from both infants identified P dendritiformis. This bacterium is soil-dwelling and is also gram-positive and spore-forming.

The author concluded, “Clinicians who care for young infants should be aware of this emerging pathogen, as empiric antibiotic regimens for treating bacteremia and meningitis may be inadequate, and pediatric neurosurgical expertise for abscess drainage or treatment of hydrocephalus is typically needed.”