Novel Langya Henipavirus

In News 

• Cases of a novel Langya henipavirus (LayV) have been reported in Shandong and Henan provinces of China.

What is Langya virus?

• The newly discovered virus is a “phylogenetically distinct Henipavirus.
• Nipah and Hendra virus also belong to the same genus, henipavirus, from the Paramyxoviridae family. 
  • Paramyxoviridae is a family of single-stranded Ribonucleic acid (RNA) viruses that cause different types of viral infections.

• The types of Henipaviruses that had been identified prior to this included Hendra, Nipah, Cedar, Mojiang and the Ghanaian bat virus. 

• The Cedar virus, Ghanaian bat virus, and Mojiang virus are not known to cause human disease. But Hendra and Nipah infect humans and can cause fatal illness.

• Discovery 
  • Langya was discovered in eastern China during surveillance testing of patients who had fever along with a recent history of animal exposure.
  •  It was identified and isolated from the throat swab sample of one of those patients. 
  • The disease may have been transmitted from shrews, small insectivorous mammals resembling a mouse
• Transmission
  • The authors of the study have underlined that the sample size of their investigation is too small to determine human-to-human transmission. 

Source:DTE