Two new viruses have been discovered in Nigeria
by a team of scientists from Nigeria and the United States of America.
The scientists said the viruses discovered were
related to rabies adding that the new viruses had some level of similarities to
the virus responsible for cases of viral haemorrhagic fever in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo in 2012.
The team said though the threat of these viruses
to the population had not been confirmed, the discovery was a breakthrough that
would help to diagnose yet-unknown fever cases in the country.
The Director, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control,
Abuja, Prof. Abdulsalami Nasidi, has also described the discovery as a major
breakthrough for Nigerian scientists.
The team was led by a Professor of Molecular
Biology and Genomics, Dr. Christian Happi. Happi is the Director, African
Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases, Redeemer’s
University, Mowe, Ogun State.
The scientists named the viruses Ekpoma virus-1
(EKV-1) and Ekpoma virus-2 (EKV-2), after the region in Edo State where they
investigated cases of individuals that had the virus in them.
The study population consisted of men and women
from all age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds living in and around Irrua,
which is close to Ekpoma.
The discovery was published on Wednesday in an
article titled ‘Discovery of Novel Rhabdoviruses in the Blood of Healthy
Individuals from West Africa” in the PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases journal.
The scientists said the discovery was possible
through the use of the “next-generation sequencing,” a high-throughput method
for sequencing DNA and RNA, which has the potential to transform virus
discovery because it does not depend on culturing the pathogen or a prior
knowledge of the pathogen’s nucleic acid sequence.
A part of the article read, “We used
next-generation sequencing to identify RNA viruses present in the blood of
patients with unexplained fever, as well as apparently healthy individuals in a
peri-urban community in Nigeria. We found several well-characterised viruses in
the blood of the febrile patients, including HIV-1, hepatitis B and C, as well
as Lassa virus. We also discovered two novel rhabdoviruses in the blood of two
apparently healthy (afebrile) females, which we named Ekpoma virus-1 and Ekpoma
virus-2.
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“Our results suggest that such rhabdovirus
infections could be common, and may not necessarily cause overt disease. The
identification of viral nucleic acid sequences in apparently healthy individuals
highlights the need for a broader understanding of all viruses infecting humans
as we increase efforts to identify viruses causing human disease.”
In a telephone interview with our correspondent
on Wednesday, Happi said, “This discovery points to the fact that the genomics
for pathogen discovery platform that we have set up at Redeemer’s University is
rapidly advancing health Sciences in Africa.”
He further said, “These two new viruses are also
related to rabies, which is a very dangerous disease. The discovery also shows
clearly that there are a lot of potentially dangerous viruses circulating
around that science has not yet discovered and there is no diagnosis yet. Once
we discovered these new viruses, we went to do proper diagnosis.
“We have not yet confirmed the threat to the
population but what this means is that there are viruses which could be causing
diseases outbreak in the country that we don’t know anything about. We could
potentially have disease outbreak in the country due to viruses that we don’t
know anything about.
“It’s important that the ministry of health
should work with us to put in place a surveillance system so that we should be
able to identify the pathogens that are responsible for some unknown causes of
fever. Also, not only we would know the pathogens responsible for fever cases,
but we should be able to discover new viruses that could be potential threat to
the population.”
Nasidi said the viruses do not pose any immediate
threat to the populace.
He said, “There is no potential threat to the
country from these viruses for now. The federal ministry of health is giving
this discovery serious attention and we commend the scientists and the group
that worked with them. So, our government should listen to Nigerian scientists,
we are now capable and competing with international counterparts. Before we
didn’t have the capabilities, so this discovery is very significant for us.
“It means that we are putting in place in the
country capabilities to be able, not only to detect diseases, but also to
discover their causes; that is empowering our research centres. As I am talking
to you, we are working on establishing our national reference laboratory that
would be based in Abuja.”
Arukaino Umukoro, The Punch
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