Hantaviruses in the Americas and Their Role as Emerging Pathogens

Viruses

Brian Hjelle¹ 

[1] ¹Center for Infectious Diseases and Immunity, Department of Pathology, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, MSC08 4640, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, USA ²Biology Department, University of New Mexico, MSC03 2020, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, USA

关键词: hantavirus;    hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome;    emergence;    pathology;    epidemiology;   

DOI  :  10.3390/v2122559

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The continued emergence and re-emergence of pathogens represent an ongoing, sometimes major, threat to populations. Hantaviruses (family Bunyaviridae) and their associated human diseases were considered to be confined to Eurasia, but the occurrence of an outbreak in 1993–94 in the southwestern United States led to a great increase in their study among virologists worldwide. Well over 40 hantaviral genotypes have been described, the large majority since 1993, and nearly half of them pathogenic for humans. Hantaviruses cause persistent infections in their reservoir hosts, and in the Americas, human disease is manifest as a cardiopulmonary compromise, hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS), with case-fatality ratios, for the most common viral serotypes, between 30% and 40%. Habitat disturbance and larger-scale ecological disturbances, perhaps including climate change, are among the factors that may have increased the human caseload of HCPS between 1993 and the present. We consider here the features that influence the structure of host population dynamics that may lead to viral outbreaks, as well as the macromolecular determinants of hantaviruses that have been regarded as having potential contribution to pathogenicity.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.