Coronavirus outbreak raises question: Why are bat viruses so deadly? UC Berkeley

[gary]

Originally Posted by Robert Sanders, Media relations| FEBRUARY 10, 2020, University of California, Berkeley

It’s no coincidence that some of the worst viral disease outbreaks in recent years — SARS, MERS, Ebola, Marburg and likely the newly arrived 2019-nCoV virus — originated in bats.

A new University of California, Berkeley, study finds that bats’ fierce immune response to viruses could drive viruses to replicate faster, so that when they jump to mammals with average immune systems, such as humans, the viruses wreak deadly havoc.

Some bats — including those known to be the original source of human infections — have been shown to host immune systems that are perpetually primed to mount defenses against viruses. Viral infection in these bats leads to a swift response that walls the virus out of cells. While this may protect the bats from getting infected with high viral loads, it encourages these viruses to reproduce more quickly within a host before a defense can be mounted.

This makes bats a unique reservoir of rapidly reproducing and highly transmissible viruses. While the bats can tolerate viruses like these, when these bat viruses then move into animals that lack a fast-response immune system, the viruses quickly overwhelm their new hosts, leading to high fatality rates.

Detailed story here :-
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/02/10...ses-so-deadly/

[multiweb (Marc)]

Were there bats for sales as food in that market where it all started?

[gary]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Were there bats for sales as food in that market where it all started?

Hi Marc,

Some researchers are investigating whether the virus may have spread
from bats to pangolins.

Pangolins are the most widely trafficked mammal on the planet, they are
critically endangered and do appear in markets in China.

However, it is not clear whether any bats or pangolins, live or dead,
were on sale in December at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan.

New York Times Feb. 10, 2020 article on whether pangolins may have
been the intermediate host :-
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/s...ronavirus.html

You will probably be familiar with the cases in Australia where the food
eaten by horses was infected by the fluids from flying foxes and in turn
contact with the horses was deadly to humans.

See :-
https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infect...dra_virus.aspx

In any case the Berkeley press release provides some insight into the remarkable immune and inflammatory systems of bats.

[multiweb (Marc)]

That's scary. We won't win that virus race. The stupidest thing we did as a civilisation is probably to slowly remove ourselves from fauna and flora.

[bojan]

Originally Posted by multiweb

That's scary. We won't win that virus race. The stupidest thing we did as a civilisation is probably to slowly remove ourselves from fauna and flora.

And, there are too many of us roaming the planet.

[Sunfish (Ray)]

Bats are widely eaten in the islands to our North and fill many ecological niche as described by Tim Flannery in Among the Islands and by Tim Severin on the Wallace Line. I wonder if they have caused any outbreaks of problems there or is it an accident of putting certain unfamiliar species together.

Plenty of megabats in the sky here looking for blossom and figs. Apparently a shrinking population.

No Bats or Pangolins in the price list photographed at the market in question although it is surprising what is on offer:

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/ho...29-p53vvm.html

[Sunfish (Ray)]

Thanks Gary. Good to see research still progressing. Maybe I am biased but it would be good to see our young immunologists funded to help answer some of these pressing science issues rather than pushed into the commercial arena.