by fPat
Concern over Ebola virus in pigs:
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]
A form of Ebola virus has been detected in pigs for the first time, raising concerns it could mutate and pose a new risk to humans.
[More]
This is Ebola Reston,which does not cause illness in humans. Nonetheless, this is very disconcerting. Pigs as a reservoir for Ebola make it much likelier that an outbreak could occur in highly populated regions rather than in lightly populated regions of Africa. You can listen to a podcast or read the paper.
In swine, this virus also causes illness and it appears to actually have been circulating in pigs for some time. The original primates that carried the first identified Reston strain in 1989 were imported from the Phillipines, which is where these pigs were located.
Technorati Tags: Science
