Current disease events in wildlife and domestic animals

[Astronuc]

My wife read an article last night about an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in rabbits, and it has been passing through populations throughout the US. So, I decided to look into it and came across a wildlifehealth.org. There is a lot of nasty stuff out there.

Detection of High Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1) in Newfoundland and Labrador 2021​

https://wildlifehealth.org/detectio...uenza-h5n1-in-newfoundland-and-labrador-2021/

On January 9, 2022, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) confirmed the presence of high pathogenic Avian Influenza (AI), subtype H5N1, at an additional farm in the Avalon Peninsula on the island portion of Newfoundland and Labrador. This small flock farm does not produce birds for sale. In an abundance of caution, the CFIA has placed the farm under quarantine and established a 10 km zone with movement control measures and enhanced biosecurity to limit any potential spread of the disease.

Avian Influenza circulates naturally in avian fauna and recent detections of high pathogenic AI in Europe indicate an even higher risk of the disease in North American poultry flocks this year.

I have to wonder about other birds passing through NL during migration, or those wild birds living in the area and stopping at the farm briefly.

Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus 2 in the U.S.: Current Updates January 2022​

As of January 2022, RHDV2 has been confirmed in wild rabbits in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Oregon.

RHDV2 has also now been confirmed in domestic rabbits in New York, Kentucky, Mississippi, Minnesota, South Dakota, Georgia and Florida (no cases in wild rabbits currently confirmed in these states).

Virus that threatens porcupines turns up in Maine​

At least three porcupines in Maine have died from a virus that wildlife experts said could threaten the species.

Biological samples later diagnosed the porcupines with skunk adenovirus 1, which was first seen in a skunk in Canada in 2014 and has since been spotted in other mammals, including foxes, porcupines and raccoons.

Well, as if SARS-Cov-2 isn't enough! Afterall, it's 2022.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

If you really want to stay up to date on disease outbreaks, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) maintains a mailing list reporting on infectious diseases in humans, animals and plants: https://promedmail.org/

Just today, they published news on meningitis B in students in England, Neospora caninum in cattle in England, and African swine fever in pigs in Asia.

 

[BillTre]

Its my feeling that this stuff (diseases being found in novels places) is probably happening all the time, but its under most people's radar (media exposure-wise).

I am most familiar with fish diseases. We (keeping research fish), of course, wanted to reduce or eliminate diseases in the fish we housed and so considered what was going on in related fields (fisheries, aquaculure, public aquariums, hobbyist), WRT diseases, new diseases, zoonotic diseases, control, etc. At the time I was working with a lot of academmic versions of fish vets.
There are just lots of diseases out there. It is a state of nature for a host, as a source of resources, to act as an evolutionary attractor of parasites that are just looking for a way to make their living (find resources to reproduce).
There are lots of potential parasites of various kinds (including viruses).
Anything living, at high density, in a monoculture setting, and potentially with low genetic variation making them more susceptible to parasite abuse, will present a good opportunity for the lucky parasite.
With the movement of fish geographically (for lots of reasons), parasites are more frequently popping up in new places.

Some fish diseases are considered to have such serious consequences, either to wild fish or the aquaculture industry, that the movement of whole classes of fish across state lines has been stopped, with serious consequences for affected fish growers.
Animals in the wild are hard to access and control, but housed animals are a different in that respect.

Many highly innovative things have been tried by fish vets. About 10 years ago, I read about a vaccine, given to fish by feeding, that infected the cells lining their gut, to make an antigen which would be presented to the immune system to make antibodies against.
This is a lot like the Covid RNA vaccines (bio-tech finally getting to humans).
Feeding vaccines to animals in the wild is probably the best approach to immunizing most species.

 

[Astronuc]

Its my feeling that this stuff (diseases being found in novels places) is probably happening all the time, but its under most people's radar (media exposure-wise).

It gets attention when there is a large population of animals infected (and dying) or a virus jumps from animal to human, as in the case of hantavirus, paramyxovirus or similar viruses, or plague (bacterium Yersinia pestis).

 

[Astronuc]

Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED)

and another resource - Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)

I was curious about the different types of influenza and the occurrence of pandemics, and found

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/avian-in-birds.htm

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/68985/WHO_CDS_2005.29.pdf

So, H1N1 and H5N1 are still with us, and apparently H3N2, all Type A influenzas.

In 2018, the world commemorated the centennial of the 1918 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history; however, little mention was made of the 50th anniversary of the 1968 A(H3N2) pandemic. Although pandemic morbidity and mortality were much lower in 1968 than in 1918, influenza A(H3N2) virus infections have become the leading cause of seasonal influenza illness and death over the last 50 years, with more than twice the number of hospitalizations from A(H3N2) as from A(H1N1) during the past six seasons. We review the emergence, progression, clinical course, etiology, epidemiology, and treatment of the 1968 pandemic and highlight the short- and long-term impact associated with A(H3N2) viruses. The 1968 H3N2 pandemic and its ongoing sequelae underscore the need for improved seasonal and pandemic influenza prevention, control, preparedness, and response efforts.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7144439/

Influenza A is further divided into different subtypes. These subtypes are based off of the combination of two proteins on the viral surface: hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). There are 18 different H subtypes and 11 different N subtypes.

For example, the most common influenza A subtypes that go around seasonally in humans are H1N1 and H3N2. In 2017, H3N2 spread to dogs in Florida. In 2015, this same strain also infected dogs in an earlier outbreak in Chicago.

Influenza A viruses can be further broken down into strains.

Unlike influenza A, influenza B isn’t further divided into subtypes. But it can be broken down further into specific viral lineages and strains.

The naming of influenza virus strains is complex. It includes information such as:

• influenza type (A, B, C, or D)
• species of origin (if isolated in an animal)
• geographical origin
• strain number
• year of isolation
• H or N subtype for influenza A

Ref: https://www.healthline.com/health/cold-flu/influenza-a-vs-b#subtypes

I did not realize this. When I had the flu, I asked about getting it typed at the clinic where I was diagnosed. I was told that it was not necessary, so I didn't push it, since I was being prescribed Tamiflu regardless). In retrospect, I wish I had. It makes me wonder about how well we know about all the influenza-like or coronavirus-like (or RSV, . . . ) infections out there.

A colleague and I both got the influenza vaccine a few years ago. Then about four or five months later, he apparently got the flu. He mentioned that they thought it might be a type B, but he didn't know for sure. I'm wondering why in this day and age, our diagnostics aren't much better. I'm guessing to keep costs down.

From ProMED

Published Date: 2022-01-22 10:14:00
Subject: PRO/AH/EDR> Powassan virus encephalitis - USA: (PA)
Archive Number: 20220122.8701018A "dangerous and rare deer tick virus (DTV)"

 

[Laroxe]

There is also the infectious disease hub which is a mine of information to worry about. :)
https://www.id-hub.com/

 

[Ygggdrasil]

For this thread, it's also worth linking this previous PF thread discussing cases where coronaviruses from various domesticated animal species (e.g. pigs and dogs) that have been transmitted to humans:

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...virus-identified-in-haitian-children.1009349/

Here are some of the journal articles cited in that thread:

Independent infections of porcine deltacoronavirus among Haitian children
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04111-z

Novel Canine Coronavirus Isolated from a Hospitalized Patient With Pneumonia in East Malaysia
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab456/6278597

Isolation of a Novel Recombinant Canine Coronavirus from a Visitor to Haiti: Further Evidence of Transmission of Coronaviruses of Zoonotic Origin to Humans
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab924/6413759

Swine acute diarrhea syndrome Coronavirus replication in primary human cells reveals potential susceptibility to infection
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/43/26915

Viruses from poultry and livestock pose continuous threats to human beings
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/3/e2022344118

Down on the farm: Farm coronaviruses are a large reservoir for new spillover events into humans
https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embr.202153701

 

[BillTre]

There's lots of viruses out there:
Here is a Science magazine news article about how there are at least 100,000 viruses around that people were unaware of.

It took just one virus to cripple the world’s economy and kill millions of people; yet virologists estimate that trillions of still-unknown viruses exist, many of which might be lethal or have the potential to spark the next pandemic. Now, they have a new—and very long—list of possible suspects to interrogate. By sifting through unprecedented amounts of existing genomic data, scientists have uncovered more than 100,000 novel viruses, including nine coronaviruses and more than 300 related to the hepatitis Delta virus, which can cause liver failure.

Babaian and colleagues performed their search by hunting for matches to the central core of the gene for RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, which is key to the replication of all RNA viruses. Such viruses include not only coronaviruses, but also those that cause flu, polio, measles, and hepatitis.

To make sure others can take advantage of the work, Babaian’s team has created a public repository of the tools it developed, along with the results. The amount of cloud-based, publicly available DNA sequences is expanding exponentially; if he did the same analysis next year, Babaian says he would expect to find hundreds of thousands more RNA viruses. “By the end of decade, I want to identify over 100 million.”