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Emerging infectious disease (Yezo virus) caused by a new tickborne nairovirus identified in Japan

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  • Emerging infectious disease (Yezo virus) caused by a new tickborne nairovirus identified in Japan

    Source: https://www.global.hokudai.ac.jp/blo...fied-in-japan/



    Emerging infectious disease caused by a new nairovirus identified in Japan
    Research Press Release | October 04, 2021

    A previously unknown virus that can infect humans and cause disease has been identified by scientists in Japan. The novel infectious virus, named Yezo virus and transmitted by tick bites, causes a disease characterized by fever and a reduction in blood platelets and leucocytes. The discovery was made by researchers at Hokkaido University and colleagues, and the results have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

    Keita Matsuno, a virologist at Hokkaido University’s International Institute for Zoonosis Control, said: “At least seven people have been infected with this new virus in Japan since 2014, but, so far, no deaths have been confirmed.”

    The Yezo virus was discovered after a 41-year-old man was admitted to the hospital in 2019 with fever and leg pain after being bitten by an arthropod believed to be a tick while he was walking in a local forest in Hokkaido. He was treated and discharged after two weeks, but tests showed he had not been infected with any known viruses carried by ticks in the region. A second patient showed up with similar symptoms after a tick bite the following year.

    Genetic analysis of viruses isolated from blood samples of the two patients found a new type of orthonairovirus, a class of nairovirus, that includes pathogens such as the Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus. The scientists named it Yezo virus, after a historical Japanese name for Hokkaido, a large island in the north of the country where the virus was discovered. The novel virus was found most closely related to Sulina virus and Tamdy virus, detected in Romania and Uzbekistan, respectively, the latter of which reportedly caused acute fever in humans recently in China...
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