Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24857749?dopt=Abstract

Emerg Infect Dis. 2014 Jun;20(6):1012-5. doi: 10.3201/eid2006.140402.
Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013.
Memish ZA, Cotten M, Meyer B, Watson SJ, Alsahafi AJ, Al Rabeeah AA, Corman VM, Sieberg A, Makhdoom HQ, Assiri A, Al Masri M, Aldabbagh S, Bosch BJ, Beer M, M?ller MA, Kellam P, Drosten C.
Abstract

We investigated a case of human infection with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) after exposure to infected camels. Analysis of the whole human-derived virus and 15% of the camel-derived virus sequence yielded nucleotide polymorphism signatures suggestive of cross-species transmission. Camels may act as a direct source of human MERS-CoV infection.
KEYWORDS:

MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome, Saudi Arabia, coronavirus, dromedary camels, respiratory infections, viruses

PMID:
24857749
[PubMed - in process]

 

[sharon sanders]

Re: Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013

hat tip Ian Mackay

Thursday, 5 June 2014

1 of these papers is pretty much exactly like the other...

This is a strange one. ​

​

Today, a New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) paper [2] came out and received a vast amount of media coverage. ​

​

It seems as if all the other recent press, the camel kissing videos, camel advocates decrying the link between MERS-CoV and their beauties and camels being included in risk assessments...have just primed the world for the next scientific paper. ​

​

And then this new paper came out showing MERS-CoV infection of a farmer and of his camels and a likely direction to that infection of camel >> farmer. And, it came out in the highly prestigious NEJM - this folks, is one part of what a high impact factor is all about - wide exposure and broad coverage. You really get your research out there.​

​

Twitter and the mainstream media have lit up with lines like "direct evidence that MERS comes from camels", "new report offers strongest evidence yet that MERS virus spreads from camels to people", "1st evidence that a new deadly virus has been transmitted from a camel to people".​

There is a problem though. It's not reeeally any of those things.​

​

These are both studies of what looks to be the same infected human (a 43-year or 44-year old man depending on which report), hospitalised at King Abdulaziz University Hospital in Jeddah on 3-November-2013, owner of a herd of 9 camels, some of whom were sick, sampled at around the same time (I presume, otherwise why sampled at all?). ​

​

The only major difference (there are smaller differences) between the 2 reports is which camel yielded sequence - it seems to have been Camel G for Drosten's lab and Camel B for Madani's - they even seem to have used the same identification scheme for the camels!​

​

Oh, one other big difference.​

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Memish and Drosten and colleagues got their paper out online around 16-May-2014; almost 3-weeks ago. ​

​

But let's also look at the sequence release/modification date too. This is the date when the researcher's virus sequence data, submitted to the public sequence database GenBank prior to the paper being published, is available. For Azhar and Madani and colleagues, that date was 1-May-2014 (sample taken 5/8-Nov-2013) and for Memish and Drosten and colleagues, 24-March-2014 (could only access 3 fragments; sampled 9-November-2013).​

​

I'm sure there are at least 2 very interesting stories behind this little event.​

References...

1. Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013
   Ziad A. Memish, Matthew Cotten, Benjamin Meyer, Simon J. Watson, Abdullah J. Alsahafi, Abdullah A. Al Rabeeah, Victor Max Corman, Andrea Sieberg, Hatem Q. Makhdoom, Abdullah Assiri, Malaki Al Masri, Souhaib Aldabbagh, Berend-Jan Bosch, Martin Beer, Marcel A. Müller, Paul Kellam, and Christian Drosten
   Emerging Infectious Diseases
   http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/20/6/14-0402_article.htm
2. Evidence for Camel-to-Human Transmission of MERS Coronavirus
   Esam I. Azhar, Ph.D., Sherif A. El-Kafrawy, Ph.D., Suha A. Farraj, M.Sc., Ahmed M. Hassan, M.Sc., Muneera S. Al-Saeed, B.Sc., Anwar M. Hashem, Ph.D., and Tariq A. Madani, M.D.
   New England Journal of Medicine
   http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa1401505

Posted by Ian M Mackay


http://virologydownunder.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/1-of-these-papers-is-pretty-much.html

 

[Emily]

Re: Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013

It is strange and the apparent B-G discrepancy doesn't exactly build confidence, but perhaps there is an explanation. But even if the letters were applied to different camels in the two studies, the CDC paper found two potential positives in B & G, then B was ruled out in later testing. In the NEJM paper, only B was a potential positive - all others were 'ND'.

The NEJM paper had some additional details on the human cases:

The patient and three of his friends had been visiting the camels daily until 3 days before his admission. The patient?s friends reported that four of the animals (Camels B, F, G, and I) had been ill with nasal discharge during the week before the onset of the patient?s illness (Table 1).
As reported by his friends, the patient had applied a topical medicine in the nose of one of the ill camels (Camel B) 7 days before the patient?s onset of illness. None of the patient?s friends had had direct contact with the camels? secretions or mucous membranes. They all remained well during the 60 days that followed the onset of illness in the patient. Five days after the patient?s hospitalization, symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection developed in his 18-year-old daughter and resolved spontaneously within 3 days without any complications.

So why did the daughter get sick? A non-MERS infection or a mild MERS infection? Why did the friends not get sick at all? Is there a genetic vulnerability?
Or is the herbal salve a fomite?

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013

Apparently we saw a similar situation with SARS: no (or no serious) morbidities in children and young adults.

 

[sharon sanders]

Re: Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013

hat tip Ronan Kelly

Research teams clash over too-similar MERS papers

By Kai Kupferschmidt Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - 6:45pm

snip


The paper by Drosten and Memish reached the finish line much faster; EID published it online on 20 March. Madani's paper went through several revisions and didn't get into print until last week.

Now that it's out, Drosten says he's standing by his criticism. Adding to his suspicions about contamination is that the NEJM authors report finding the virus at very low concentrations in the camel. “It seems strange that they managed to get a virus isolate from that at all,” Mackay says. Azhar says that the samples used to isolate the virus may have contained higher concentrations than those used to first detect the virus.


http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2014/06/research-teams-clash-over-too-similar-mers-papers

 

[Shiloh]

Re: Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013

Source: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/40186/title/MERS-Double-Publication-/


MERS Double Publication?

Two papers on the same Middle East respiratory syndrome victim hint at uncouth scientific competition and possible laboratory contamination, plus illuminate potential issues within the Saudi Arabian health ministry.

By Jef Akst | June 11, 2014

FLICKR, JORGE L?SCARTwo papers on Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), appearing in two different journals this year, have some suspicious redundancy. Both presented data from the very same patient in Saudi Arabia, who died of a lab-confirmed MERS infection. Both drew the same conclusion: that camels are a likely source of the man?s infection. But what the papers do not share are authors...

 

[Emily]

Re: Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013

Additional quote from Sciencemag gives due credit to Ian Mackay:

The case is another example of the complex politics of MERS research in Saudi Arabia, says Ian Mackay, a virologist at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia, in Australia, who first highlighted the similarities between the two papers on his blog on 5 June. "It typifies what MERS has been all about: very poor communication.?