Skip to main content

Bush Meat Trade Poses Virus Threat


Bush meat trade poses virus threat
Source: PLoS One: Zoonotic Viruses Associated with Illegally Imported Wildlife Products

Nearly 75% of emerging infectious diseases in humans are of zoonotic origin, with majority of them originating from contact with wildlife. These infectious diseases acquired via the wildlife trade are increasingly becoming a concern to global public health.

SARS, avian flu, swine flu and Ebola all began in animals before somehow mutating and spreading to humans. SARS emerged as a respiratory and gastrointestinal disease in southwest China and within months had spread to 29 other countries, eventually leading the 8098 cases and 714 deaths. Masked palm civets traded in the markets of Guangdong were found to be infected and a large proportion of the early cases were restaurant workers who butchered wildlife from these markets.

In a new study conducted by Smith K. M. and colleagues published in the PLoS One journal, they reported potentially dangerous viruses entering the US through illegally imported wildlife products. For this study bush meat was defined according to the Oxford Dictionary as the meat of African wild animals. The researchers examined bush meat passing through the John F Kennedy (JFK) airport in New York from October 2008 to September 2010. Also at the beginning of April 2010, products seized from the Philadelphia, Washington Dulles, George Bush International, Houston and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International were included in the study.

Figure 1: Non-human primate bush meat specimens confiscated at US airports. 
Examples of smuggled simian bush meat (a) skull (b) hand (c) skull and torso, and (d) arm.
The researchers examined 44 animals – 35 rodents and 9 primates. Simian foamy virus (SFV) and two herpesviruses - cytomegaloviruses (CMV) and lymphocryptoviruses (LCV) - were detected in the smuggled non-human primate (NHP) bush meat. SFV and CMV were detected in two non-human primates originating from Nigeria namely the Nigerian-Cameroon chimpanzee and the greater white-nosed monkey. These non-human primates have been classified has “endangered” and “vulnerable” respectively by the International Union for Conservation.

SFV is a zoonotic infection of humans. The mode of transmission is poorly understood and infected people reported sustaining a NHP exposure (mostly bites) others did not, suggesting a less invasive mode of infection is possible. These viruses are probably not easily spread from human-to-human, although persistent infection has been documented. Several SFV-positive people reported donating blood while infected and because blood banks do not screen for SFV, secondary transmission via contaminated blood donations may be possible.

The herpesviruses detected are not considered dangerous to humans however related viruses cause disease in humans.

These results are the first demonstration that illegal bush meat importation could act as a conduit for pathogen spread, and therefore implementation of disease surveillance of the wildlife trade will help facilitate prevention of disease emergence.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Food-borne Trematodiasis

Food-borne Trematodiasis Trematodes or flukes are flatworms belonging to the Phylum Platyheminthes. They are small parasitic flatworms that use vertebrates as their definitive host and mollusc as their intermediate host. Trematode infections such as schistosomiasis have emerged as important tropical infections. An estimated 200 million people in the tropical belts of the world may have schistosomal infection. This makes Schistosoma infection the second most prevalent tropical infectious disease in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa after malaria. Depending on the habitat in the infected host, flukes can be classified as blood flukes, liver flukes, lung flukes or intestinal flukes.   Blood flukes include Schistosoma haematobium, Schistosoma mansoni, Schistosoma japonicum, Schistosoma mekongi, and Schistosoma intercalatum. Liver flukes include Fasciola hepatica, Fasciola gigantica, C sinensis, Opisthorchis felineus, O viverrini, Dicrocoelium dendriticum, and Dicr...
7 comments
Read more

Attributable Risk

Many diseases are caused by more than one exposure. For example, there is a high risk of developing CHD on the basis of cigarette smoking, elevated blood pressure and high blood cholesterol. For there to be a reduction in the incidence of CHD in the population, public health programs would be directed towards reducing or eliminating these causal exposures. This is the aim of epidemiologic research; to identify and assess risk factors as well as planning and evaluating public health intervention or control measures so as to reduce the incidences of disease in the population. For this to be possible, the epidemiologist must be able to predict the impact of the removable of a particular exposure on the risk of developing a disease. This then begs the question:      What amount of the risk of developing a disease is attributable to a particular exposure? ·    By what percent would the risk of developing disease be reduced if the exposure were elim...
Post a Comment
Read more

NIGERIA DECIDES: An Analysis of the Just Concluded 2015 General Elections held on the March 28, 2015

A post about election on an infectious disease blog weird right, but hey I love maps and infectious disease data is no different from an election result data. While the result of the just concluded Nigerian election have been mapped, I haven’t come across cartogram visualization. So here we go……….. The Nigeria presidential election held on the 28 th of March was a closely fought match between incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, who is seeking a second four-year term under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and former military ruler Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressive Congress (APC). Article 134(2) of the Nigerian constitution stipulates that a presidential candidate will be duly elected after attaining both the highest number of votes cast, and having received at least a quarter of the votes at each of at least two-thirds of the thirty-six (36) states including the Federal Capital territory (FCT). If no candidate satisfies the requirement, a se...
Post a Comment
Read more