Virus Identified in Rural China Kills 30% of Victims, May be Tick-Borne
A fever-triggering illness that has killed about 30 percent of infected patients in rural China has been traced to a new virus.
Researchers, who designated the culprit as the SFTS bunyavirus, believe the disease is transmitted by ticks that count most mammals in the Asia-Pacific region as hosts, according to a study today in the New England Journal of Medicine. SFTS is short for severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome.
The scientists confirmed the virus’s presence in 171 patients, who were mostly farmers living in six provinces in China, since 2009. They had fever, thrombocytopenia and leukocytopenia -- low counts of blood platelets and white blood cells -- and dysfunction in multiple organs. There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, the researchers said.
“These are not viruses that are airborne or easily transmitted,” Heinz Feldmann, chief of the Laboratory of Virology for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Hamilton, Montana, said in a telephone interview. “It’s very unlikely it would spread into areas where the virus is not present.
“The risk of a global outbreak or even a larger epidemic is remote,” said Feldmann, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal.
To contact the reporter on this story: Meg Tirrell in New York at mtirrell@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: at rgale5@bloomberg.net.
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