New virus in Japan: it has already been transmitted to humans

A group of Japanese scientists from Sapporo General Hospital has published a study of serum samples from 248 patients who could have been infected through ticks of a new virus. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications and is based on a new type of virus unknown until the date.

It is the Yezo virus, belonging to the family Nairoviridae and the genus Orthonairovirus . This virus has already been confirmed in seven patients, and the first were infected in forest areas . Four of the patients also had bacteria of the genus of Borrelia , transmitted through ticks.

The first patient was hospitalized for fifteen days

Alarms went off when a patient came to Sapporo General Hospital in 2019 for loss of appetite, fever and bilateral pain in the legs. The professionals carried out an examination of the patient, the result of which was normal, until they explained that a tick was extracted from the abdomen after spending four hours in a forest area.

Four days later, his fever rose to more than 39 degrees and doctors found “findings compatible” with fatty liver disease without organomegaly, according to Nius . Thus, a series of antibiotics that are commonly used to combat Lyme disease, relapsing fever, rickettsiosis or turalemia were applied.

Thanks to this therapy, the patient was able to recover and was discharged fifteen days after entering the hospital . Despite this, the patient’s serum tests were negative for Lyme disease, relapsing fever, rickettsiosis, turalemia, Japanese encephalitis virus, and tick-borne encephalitis virus, so the origin disease was still a mystery.

Some viruses of the same group have a lethality of 40%

According to Nius, the lethality of the Yezo virus in humans is not yet known, but in the Crimea-Congo virus (which belongs to the same group as Yezo) this percentage reaches 40%. Thus, Yezo is increasing global concern in public health, due to its ignorance and its ability to affect humans.