The Akron Legal News

Login | March 28, 2024

OSU researchers: New pig virus potential threat to humans

KEITH ARNOLD
Special to the Legal News

Published: May 24, 2018

A pig virus that in a lab setting can infect the cultured cells of people, in addition to other species, is the subject of a new Ohio State University-Utrecht University study focussing on intraspecial transmission.

Published online in the journal PNAS, the study resulted in a discovery, raising concerns about the potential for outbreaks that threaten human and animal health.

Porcine deltacoronavirus, first identified in 2012 in pigs in China, was not associated with disease.

Its first detection in the United States in 2014 here in Ohio was associated with a diarrhea outbreak, according to a press release.

Having spread throughout many countries, the virus, now, afflicts young pigs with diarrhea and vomiting.

The disease can be fatal to the animals.

No human cases have been documented, but scientists are concerned about the possibility.

"Before it was found in pigs - including in the Ohio outbreak - had only been found in various birds," said study senior author Linda Saif, an investigator in Ohio State's Food Animal Health Research Program at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, in Wooster. "We're very concerned about emerging coronaviruses and worry about the harm they can do to animals and their potential to jump to humans."

The virus's similarity to the life-threating viruses responsible for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) outbreaks has given researchers cause to worry.

Lead researcher Scott Kenney, an assistant professor of veterinary preventive based in the Food Animal Health Research Program at the research and development center, said the potential for a virus to jump from one species to another is highly dependent on its ability to bind to receptors on the cells of the animal or human.

"A receptor is like a lock in the door," he said. "If the virus can pick the lock, it can get into the cell and potentially infect the host,"

This study looked at a particular cellular receptor called aminopeptidase N that the researchers suspected might be involved, the press release detailed.

"We know from other coronaviruses that these receptors on the cells are used and that they're found in the respiratory and digestive tracts of a number of different animals," Kenney said. "Now we know that this new virus could go into cells of different species, including humans."

Researchers said the next step in understanding the virus and its potential for human infection is a study looking for antibodies in the blood that would serve as evidence that the pig virus has already infected people.

"We now know for sure that porcine deltacoronavirus can bind to and enter cells of humans and birds. Our next step is to look at susceptibility - can sick pigs transmit their virus to chickens, or vice versa, and to humans?" Saif said.

This study was supported by The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development.

Ohio State researchers Kwonil Jung and Moyasar Alhamo also worked on the study.

Copyright © 2018 The Daily Reporter - All Rights Reserved


[Back]