Menangle virus is a virus that infects pig

Pig

A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...

s, human

Human

Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...

s and bat

Bat

Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...

s.

History

Menangle virus was first identified in 1997 after a piggery in Menangle

Menangle, New South Wales

Menangle is a village in the Macarthur Region of New South Wales, Australia.-Location:Menangle is part of the Wollondilly Shire. At the 2006 census, Menangle had a population of 327 people.-History:...

 near Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, NSW

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 experienced a high number of stillbirths and deformities during farrowing. Two workers at the piggery came down with an unexplained serious flu-like illness, but subsequently recovered. They later tested positive for Menangle virus antibodies.

Vector

The source of the outbreak may have been a nearby population of fruit bat

Fruit Bat

Fruit Bat can refer to:* Megabats, a species of bat which eats fruit* Les "Fruitbat" Carter, guitarist of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine* Fruit Bats , an American band...

s or flying foxes. Bats appear to be an asymptomatic

Asymptomatic

In medicine, a disease is considered asymptomatic if a patient is a carrier for a disease or infection but experiences no symptoms. A condition might be asymptomatic if it fails to show the noticeable symptoms with which it is usually associated. Asymptomatic infections are also called subclinical...

 host

Host (biology)

In biology, a host is an organism that harbors a parasite, or a mutual or commensal symbiont, typically providing nourishment and shelter. In botany, a host plant is one that supplies food resources and substrate for certain insects or other fauna...

. Infection is thought to occur through serious contact with bodily fluids from infected animals (i.e. blood

Blood

Blood is a specialized bodily fluid in animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells....

 and possibly foetal matter).

Menangle is related to the recently discovered Tioman virus

Tioman virus

Tioman virus is a paramyxovirus first isolated from the urine of island fruit bats on Tioman Island, Malaysia in 2000...

 which is also bat-borne.

Menangle is one of three recently discovered zoonotic

Zoonosis

A zoonosis or zoonoseis any infectious disease that can be transmitted from non-human animals to humans or from humans to non-human animals . In a study of 1415 pathogens known to affect humans, 61% were zoonotic...

 virus

Virus

A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...

es in Australia that are carried by bats. The others are Hendra virus

Henipavirus

Henipavirus is a genus of the family Paramyxoviridae, order Mononegavirales containing two established species, Hendra virus and Nipah virus. The henipaviruses are naturally harboured by Pteropid fruit bats , and some microbat species...

 and Australian bat lyssavirus

Australian bat lyssavirus

Australian bat lyssavirus is a zoonotic virus closely related to rabies virus. It was first identified in a 5-month old juvenile Black Flying Fox collected near Ballina in northern New South Wales, Australia in 1996 during a national surveillance program for the recently identified Hendra virus...

 (ABLV or bat rabies

Rabies

Rabies is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis in warm-blooded animals. It is zoonotic , most commonly by a bite from an infected animal. For a human, rabies is almost invariably fatal if post-exposure prophylaxis is not administered prior to the onset of severe symptoms...

).

External links

• CSIRO Menangle Factsheet
• CSIRO slide showing Menangle virus in piglet brain
• Menangle (Paramyxo) virus infection in pigs – trial eradication (1999) Australian Pork Limited / University of Sydney
  University of Sydney
  The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...