Luckily for us, medical science is often able to trace the origin of new viral diseases within a relatively short space of time. For example, researchers didn’t take long to discover that the Ebola virus is originally hosted by different species of fruit bats, which in turn transmit the infection to humans and other primates. Notwithstanding, the origin of the hepatitis virus, that has caused human suffering for such a long time, is still unknown.
Recently, however, it was announced that an international group of researchers is well on the way to solving the mystery. And a virologist at the University of Bremen, Professor Andreas Dotzauer, was crucially involved in the discovery. The research findings have now been published in the renowned US American journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences“. (You will find links to the abstract and the article in full at the bottom of the page)
The researchers discovered the oldest form of the human hepatitis A virus in small mammals, and from this they were able to reconstruct the pedigree of the virus. They found that the oldest forms of viruses were hosted by insect-eating small mammals like shrews, hedgehogs, and fruit bats. There are indications that these viruses descend from extremely ancient insect viruses that succeeded in adapting to their new mammalian hosts. The viruses were then passed on from the insect-eating mammals to small rodents like mice, for instance, and from there some 29 million years ago to humans or possibly one of our primate ancestors. The oldest mammal viruses already exhibit some mutual characteristics with the human hepatitis A virus: They, too, caused acute infection of the liver, were transmitted via the faecal-oral route, and attacked by anti-bodies against the human hepatitis A virus. The researchers believe that populous communities of hosts and their high mobility favored the survivability of the virus.
The study underscores the need for further scientific analysis of animal viruses and their hosts to shed light on the danger of zoonotic transmission to humans and threats to human health, as so often occurred in the past (AIDS, Ebola fever, SARS, MERS, Hantavirus fever).
For more information, please contact:
University of Bremen
Prof.Dr. Andreas Dotzauer
Faculty Biology / Chemistry
Laboratory for Virus Research
Phone: +49 421 218 63396
e-mail: dotzauerprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
www.virologie.uni-bremen.de
