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THE OTHER SIDE OF VIROLOGY: BEYOND OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Dengue virus: Urgency in our warming world

By GVN | January 10, 2024

  Why is this important? In the summer of 2023, Mexico and countries in Central America and the Caribbean were in the news because of extensive outbreaks of the mosquito-borne dengue virus (DENV) (1). These outbreaks were at least partially weather-related: Warmer temperatures exacerbated by El Niño and global warming are linked to heavier-than-normal precipitation…

Multiple Sclerosis: How is it Associated with Epstein-Barr Virus?

By GVN | August 3, 2023

In the past, Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has been associated with many virus infections. But causation has been hard to establish for any specific virus. The association to Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) comes from a recent study involving a large military cohort (> 10 million adults) in which there were 955 cases of MS. The risk of…

Exploring the Mystery of Acute Pediatric Non-A-E Hepatitis

By GVN | June 6, 2023

Recent outbreaks of non-A, -B, -C, -D, or -E hepatitis among young children have presented epidemiologists with a mystery. The hepatitis cases tended to be severe, leading in many cases to liver transplantation. But, in searching for an infectious origin, one group of researchers detected in many of these hepatitis cases a prominent cause of…

Marburg Virus Disease: Another Filovirus Zoonosis

By GVN | May 2, 2023

Recently, Marburg Virus Disease (MVD), Ebola’s equally deadly cousin, emerged in Tanzania and in at least three separate locations in Equatorial Guinea. The two countries are on opposite sides of Africa’s coast and separated by thousands of kilometers, but both are in the range of Egyptian fruit bats. The bats are the natural hosts for…

Why Worry About Avian Flu?

By GVN | March 1, 2023

The Covid pandemic is the latest concern regarding potential zoonotic spillover of a dangerous virus. What will actually be the next virus? In the game of spillover roulette, some have put their bets on yet another coronavirus. Lately, however, the smart money seems to be betting on avian flu, or more specifically, H5N1 avian flu.…

Ebola in Uganda

By GVN | January 26, 2023

A moderate sized Ebola outbreak (142 confirmed cases) in Uganda has recently been in the news. Fifty-five people died; the others recovered. It has now largely been controlled, but there are some issues associated with the outbreak that are worth considering. These relate to conventional control by contact tracing and isolation (which was how it…

Flu Vaccines: What Does the Future Hold?

By GVN | January 4, 2023

Omicron spinoffs, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and influenza (flu) viruses have formed a sort of unholy trinity of respiratory infections. Covid vaccines were initially highly effective against infection, hospitalization, and death, but with the multiplication of new variants, only strong protection against hospitalization and death remains. In a previous Perspective (https://gvn.org/respiratory-syncytial-virus-newly-resurgent/), we noted that the…

Lassa fever vaccine development: Where are we?

By GVN | December 5, 2022

Joseph Anejo-Okopi, PhD1,2. 1Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Federal University of Health Sciences Otukpo, Nigeria. 2AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria, Jos University Teaching Hospital, Jos, Nigeria Email Address: [email protected], [email protected], December 5, 2022 Introduction  Lassa virus (LASV) causes acute viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) called Lassa fever (LF) that is endemic to West Africa (Nigeria,…

Respiratory Syncytial Virus: Newly Resurgent

By GVN | December 5, 2022

December 5, 2022 Introduction  We seem to be in a sort of Golden Age of respiratory viruses, including flu, SARS-CoV2 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). RSV is an enveloped negative strand RNA virus with a genome of approximately 15,000 nucleotides encoding 11 proteins. There are two serotypes, A and B, which can be discriminated by…

Global Outbreaks of Monkeypox

By GVN | September 15, 2022

May 25, 2022  INTRODUCTION  WHO and other health organizations are alarmed at the recent global outbreak of monkeypox. As of May 21, 2022, more than 80 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in at least 12 countries outside of Africa (1). The first case of the disease in the UK was reported on May 7,…