A newly identified virus that causes diarrhea and uncontrollable vomiting in pigs could pose a potentially deadly threat to humanity.
The pathogen bears a resemblance to the deadly viruses responsible for Sars (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and Mers (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), which claimed more than a thousand lives at once, although delta coronavirus was not associated with the disease when it was first detected in pigs in China.
Only in 2014 was it found that this virus was the cause of the outbreak of diarrhea among pigs in Ohio, USA. Since then, it has appeared in pigs around the world, and has been the cause of high mortality among piglets.
Researchers have shown that the virus targets a specific receptor molecule on the surface of cells lining the airways and digestive tract. Blocking a receptor for a multifunctional enzyme called aminopeptidase N allows the virus to gain access to the host.
After conducting a series of experiments with cell cultures taken from domestic animals with which people most often come into contact, the scientists found that the virus associated with blocking the receptors develops not only in pig cell cultures, as expected, but also in chickens, cats and humans. Of course, all these animals are far from human, but, nevertheless, all cell cultures were infected with porcine deltacoronavirus.
In addition, there are disturbing similarities between the swine virus and the Sars and Mers viruses, according to the researchers. In 2002 and 2003, the Sars outbreak, which began in China, caused 774 deaths in 37 countries. Scientists later found out that the Sars virus first arose among bats, and only then spread among people.
The Mers virus is believed to have spread to humans from camels. To date, the Mers outbreak in Saudi Arabia has resulted in more than 1,800 infections and 708 deaths.
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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