What’s Up with ARENAVIRIDAE?

Three previously unexplained deaths of a 52-year-old woman who died in June 1999 in Riverside County, a 14-year-old girl who died in April 2000 in Alameda County, and a 30-year-old woman who died in June 2000 in Orange County have been attributed to an arenavirus infection. The victims were hospitalized for fever, respiratory distress, liver diesase and bleeding, but the cases are assumed to be unrelated. Investigation by PCR showed that nucleotide sequences found in the patients resembled those of the Whitewater Arroyo virus

Arenavirus Infection Linked to Deaths in California. Journal of Environmental Health v63, n9 (May, 2001):37.
Fatal Illnesses Associated With a New World Arenavirus--California, 1999-2000.(From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association v284, n10 (Sept 13, 2000):1237.

A Nigerian patient who showd signs of fever, disorientation, seizures, and blood-brain barrier dysfunction also had Lassa virus in his cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) but not in serum. This finding suggests that Lassa virus or specific Lassa virus strains can persist in the central nervous system and lead to neuropathogenesis or specifically, encephalopathy.

Gunther S, Weisner B, Roth A, Grewing T, Asper M, Drosten C, Emmerich P, Petersen J, Wilczek M, Schmitz H. Lassa fever encephalopathy: Lassa virus in cerebrospinal fluid but not in serum.

Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2001 Aug 1;184(3):345-9.

Researchers discovered that serum interleukin (IL)-8 and interferon (IFN)-inducible protein (IP)-10 levels are significantly higher in patients with acute nonfatal Lassa fever than in patients with other febrile illnesses and uninfected individuals. However, patients with fatal Lassa fever persented very low or undetectable levels of IL-8 and IP-10.

Mahanty S, Bausch DG, Thomas RL, Goba A, Bah A, Peters CJ, Rollin PE. Low levels of interleukin-8 and interferon-inducible protein-10 in serum are associated with fatal infections in acute Lassa fever. Journal of Infectious Disease. 2001 Jun 15;183(12):1713-21

Allpahuayo virus was initially isolated from arboreal rice rats and collected during 1997 at the Allpahuayo Biological Station in northeastern Peru. Through serological and genetic tests, the virus was identified as a member of the Tacaribe complex of the genus Arenavirus. During research, two ambisense, nonoverlapping reading frames were located. These reading frames resulted in two gene products, a glycoprotein precursor (GPC) and a nucleocapsid protein (NP).

Moncayo, Abelardo C., et al. Allpahuayo virus: A newly recognized Arenavirus (Arenaviridae) from arboreal rice rats (Oecomys bicolor and Oecomys paricola) in northeastern Peru. Virology. June 5 2001; v.284, no.2, p.277-286

GP-C, a surface glycoprotien on the Lassa virus, was found to be cleaved in the endoplasmic reticulam by the subtilase SKI-1S1P enzyme, which was previously known to be involved in the metabolism of cholestorol. This cleaved glycoprotein is encorporated into the Lassa virons and was found to be necessary for infectious virus to form. This new finding has important implications in antiviral therapy.

Lenz, Oliver; ter Meulen, Jan; Klenk, Hans-Dieter; Seidah, Nabil G.; Garten, Wolfgang The Lassa virus glycoprotein precursor GP-C is proteolytically processed by subtilase SKI-1/S1P.(Statistical Data Included) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States v98, n22 (Oct 23, 2001):12701

Analysis of Pirital-like virus isolated from rodents in Venezuela show that extreme genetic diversity exists between the arenaviruses. Up to 6% difference in nucleotide sequence was found yielding 12 different genotypes. This study follows up on the previous proposal that 12% nucleocapsid protein amino acid sequence divergence should be the cutoff value for delineating arenavirus species and shows it is not appropriate for the entire family

Weaver, Scott C, et al. Extreme genetic diversity among Pirital virus (Arenaviridae) isolates from western Venezuela. Virology ; June 20 2001; v.285, no.1, p.110-118.

The nucleocapsid protein of the Junin virus was found to have zinc binding properties. This protein plays an important role in synthesis of viral capsid and promoting synthesis of RNA.

Tortorici, M. Alejandra, et al. Zinc-binding properties of Junin virus nucleocapsid protein.. Journal of General Virology ; January 2001; v.82, no.1, p.121-128.