Reston virus causes severe respiratory infection in pigs

Reston ebolavirus (RESTV) should be considered as a livestock pathogen with the potential to affect other mammals, including humans, according to scientists from the National Institutes of Health. The warning comes from a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which the scientists found that experimental pigs with RESTV developed severe respiratory disease and stripped the virus from the upper respiratory tract.

RESTV can infect humans but is not known to cause infection. Now the scientists are expressing concern that pigs could be a “temporary host or augmentation for ebolaviruses.”

“The exposure of RESTV in pigs is a wake-up call because it is possible to spread into humans through direct contact with pigs or the food chain,” they say in their study report. science from the NIH National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) the work at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana.

Scientists first identified RESTV in 1989 in research monkeys transported from the Philippines to Reston, Virginia. The virus also gained attention in 2008 when a pig revolution took place in the Philippines. That revolution led to the first association of pig-to-human RESTV transmission, prompting the World Health Organization to issue a global warning in February 2009. RESTV strains were also identified in pigs in China, and scientists recommend officials monitor pigs for disease. throughout the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

NIAID scientists conducted their study to answer two key questions: whether they could cause disease in young pigs – mimicking natural disease with RESTV isolated from the 2008 pig revolution – and if so, would these pigs shed a virus through their respiratory tract? Their work actually proved that the pigs developed a large infection with a virus peeling from the upper respiratory tract.

They also concluded that the age of the pigs at the time of the disease – they would use animals between three and seven weeks – did not change the course of the disease. Their work involved Yorkshire crossbred pigs, which are often used in commercial pig production systems. RESTV has not been found in commercial pigs in the United States.

Ongoing studies in this project will examine whether co-infection with other swine viruses affects the ability of RESTV to cause severe infection in pigs and whether pigs play a broad role in hosting ebolaviruses.