Virus sin nombre

Remote sensing and ground truthing can improve predictions. Once we understand the link between environment and disease, we ought to be able to forecast disease at least as well as we forecast the weather. Glass, Gregory E. Cheek, Jonathan A. Patz, Timothy M. Shields, Timothy J. Doyle, Douglas A.

Thoroughman, Darcy K. Hunt, Russell E. Enscore, Kenneth L. Gage, Charles Irland, C. Peters, and Ralph Bryan. Emerging Infectious Diseases. Accessed August 15, Accessed January 9, Nichol, Stuart T. Emerging Viral Diseases. Land Life Remote Sensing.

EO Explorer. At the time of publication, it represented the best available science. Subscribe to our newsletters. On May 14, , a young, physically fit man living in the American Southwest suddenly collapsed. He was rushed to a New Mexico hospital but died of acute respiratory failure within hours. By May 17, medical center officials identified three similar deaths in the Four Corners region where the borders of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet. All of the victims had been young and otherwise healthy.

However, risk factors associated with exposure to particulates potentially contaminated with hantaviruses are generally not well understood. We investigated human exposure to particulate matter and evaluated the effects of season, location sylvan and peridomestic environment , and activity walking and sweeping on generation of particulates at the breathing zone 1. We found greater volumes of small inhalable particulates during the spring and summer compared to the fall and winter seasons and greater volumes of small inhalable particulates produced in peridomestic, compared to sylvan, environments.

Also, greater volumes of particulates were generated at the breathing zone while walking compared to sweeping. Results suggest that more aerosolized particles were generated during the spring and summer months.

Our findings suggest that simply moving around in buildings is a significant source of human exposure to particulates, potentially contaminated with SNV, during spring and summer seasons. These findings could be advanced by investigation of what particle sizes SNV is most likely to attach to, and where in the respiratory tract humans become infected. Aerosolized virally contaminated particulates are the major source of human exposure to hantaviruses globally.

The reservoir host for SNV was determined to be the widespread, native deer mouse Peromyscus maniculatus. Since , numerous ecological studies have focused on SNV dynamics in deer mouse populations, but few studies have investigated the mechanisms of human exposure. Here, we investigate human exposure to aerosolized and potentially virally contaminated particulate matter. The capability of hantaviruses to survive outside the host is critical for the transmission dynamics within rodent populations and from rodents to humans Schmaljohn et al.

Research suggests that humans have the greatest risk of SNV exposure during the early to middle period of the deer mouse breeding season spring—summer when SNV transmission among deer mice, and consequently human exposure risk, is likely greatest Childs et al. Exposure is typically associated with sweeping and cleaning activities within peridomestic settings, but may also occur in sylvan settings Mills et al. The number of HPS cases has been greatest in rural peridomestic environments, where SNV transmission among deer mice is greater than adjacent sylvan settings Armstrong et al.

Sweeping or cleaning in peridomestic settings such as barns and outbuildings, could increase human exposure risk to aerosolized particles contaminated with SNV from deer mouse excreta Armstrong et al. Furthermore, SNV contaminated particulate matter has been hypothesized to survive longer within peridomestic settings because the virus is sheltered from external environmental conditions, such as wind and ultraviolet radiation, that would disperse the contaminated deer mouse excreta and degrade the virus Carver et al.

Little is known about how human use of peridomestic settings contributes to potential SNV exposure Cline et al. More specifically, human exposure to particulate matter potentially contaminated with SNV has not been studied. Here, we investigated particle exposure while walking through and sweeping in peridomestic and sylvan settings. We hypothesized that there would be a greater concentration of inhalable aerosolized particulate matter generated within peridomestic environments than in sylvan environments due to particulate accumulation within a confined space buildings.

Furthermore, we hypothesized that sweeping or cleaning activities would generate greater concentrations of aerosol particulate due to large amounts of dust and debris being disturbed. Finally, we expected that there would be greater volumes of aerosol particulate in the spring and summer seasons when most cases of HPS are contracted. We selected four replicate sampling locations latitude, longitude in western Montana: a ranch near Cascade At each site, we designated one sampling location as a peridomestic environment barn and one as a sylvan environment field.

The barns all contained corrals, soil, and straw floors and large sliding or swinging doors on each end of the structure. We chose barns because they represent the kind of environments in which humans may become exposed to SNV Cline et al.

Deer mice utilize a wide variety of sylvan habitat types i. These settings contained comparable substrate particularly open soil to periodomestic sites, and a potential source of particles dust from soil particulates that could become infected with SNV resulting in human exposure. Sampling occurred during the afternoon and consisted of a 30 min particulate matter sample collection while walking, and a 30 min particulate matter sample collection while sweeping with 10 min between periods in both peridomestic and sylvan environments.

Both walking and sweeping were performed by a single individual within 3 m of two different air samplers. We placed samplers on stands in the center of the barn lane 1. We acknowledge that the height of an individual varies depending on activity, but examination of the elevation profile in particle production was beyond the scope of this study.

Walking and sweeping actions were undertaken in circular patterns within 3 m surrounding the sample units. The isolation of the virus in a matter of months was remarkable. This success was based on close cooperation of all the agencies and individuals involved in investigating the outbreak, years of basic research on other hantaviruses that had been conducted at CDC and USAMRIID, and on the continuing development of modern molecular virologic tests.

To put the rapid isolation of the Sin Nombre virus in perspective, it took several decades for the first hantavirus discovered, the Hantaan virus, to be isolated. As part of the effort to locate the source of the virus, researchers located and examined stored samples of lung tissue from people who had died of unexplained lung disease.

Other early cases of HPS have been discovered by examining samples of tissue belonging to people who had died of unexplained adult respiratory distress syndrome. By this method, the earliest known case of HPS that has been confirmed has been the case of a year-old Utah man in Interestingly, while HPS was not known to the epidemiologic and medical communities, there is evidence that it was recognized elsewhere. The Navajo Indians, a number of whom contracted HPS during the outbreak, recognize a similar disease in their medical traditions, and actually associate its occurrence with mice.

As strikingly, Navajo medical beliefs concur with public health recommendations for preventing the disease. But why this sudden cluster of cases? The key answer to this question is that, during this period, there were suddenly many more mice than usual.

The Four Corners area had been in a drought for several years. Then, in early , heavy snows and rainfall helped drought-stricken plants and animals to revive and grow in larger-than-usual numbers. With so many mice, it was more likely that mice and humans would come into contact with one another, and thus more likely that the hantavirus carried by the mice would be transmitted to humans.

Researchers and clinicians investigating the ongoing outbreak were not the only groups concerned about the disease. Shortly after the first few HPS patients died and it became clear that a new disease was affecting people in the area, and that no one knew how it was transmitted, the news media began extensive reporting on the outbreak.

Widespread concern among the public ensued. Unfortunately, the first victims of the outbreak were Navajo. Cases of human infection in the Four Corners region have a spring-summer seasonal pattern 9 , However, peridomestic populations of deer mice from two study sites near Butte, Montana, had no distinct seasonal patterns of transmission of hantavirus infection unpub.

The seasonal patterns we found in deer mice captured in homes may be an artifact of sample size. Infestation of homes by deer mice is not restricted to rural environments. SNV infection may be as prevalent in deer mice captured in homes in urban and suburban environments as in populations in sylvatic habitats.

Urban and suburban homeowners are not exempt from the risk for hantavirus infection and should follow recommendations for risk reduction Kuenzi is an assistant reserach professor at Montana Tech of the University of Montana. Her research focuses on small mammal population ecology.

We thank C. Younce, T. Wilson, S. Douglass, D. White, Jr. Peterson for laboratory support; and J. Mills for review of the manuscript. Table of Contents — Volume 6, Number 4—August Please use the form below to submit correspondence to the authors or contact them at the following address:.

Amy J. Highlight and copy the desired format. Data is collected weekly and does not include downloads and attachments. View data is from.

The Altmetric Attention Score for a research output provides an indicator of the amount of attention that it has received.

The score is derived from an automated algorithm, and represents a weighted count of the amount of attention Altmetric picked up for a research output. Section Navigation.