Exotic Virus Discovered in Florida Rodent with Human 'Spillover' Risk
A brand new virus, which may be able to jump to humans, has been detected in a mouse in Florida.
The virus is a type of jeilongvirus, which have previously only been found in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America.
This new virus—named Gainesville rodent jeilongvirus 1—marks the first time that a virus of this type has been discovered in the U.S., according to a new paper in the journal Pathogens.
The specific virus detected in the mouse—which had been dropped at the feet of virus researcher John Lednicky by his pet cat Pepper—was found to be genetically very different from other known jeilongviruses.
"We were not anticipating a virus of this sort, and the discovery reflects the realization that many viruses that we don't know about circulate in animals that live in close proximity to humans. And indeed, were we to look, many more would be discovered," said co-author Emily DeRuyter, a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida, in a statement.
Lednicky, a research professor at the University of Florida's College of Public Health and Health Professions, wondered if the common cotton mouse delivered by his cat could host mule deerpox, prompting him to take the mouse to his lab for testing. Rather than finding the deerpox, he discovered a brand new type of jeilongvirus.
Jeilongviruses belong to the viral family Paramyxoviridae, which includes a large number of other viruses, including the human viruses that cause measles and mumps.
Gainesville rodent jeilongvirus 1 appears to be able to infect cells from several different species, making it prime for a spillover event, which is when a virus jumps from one species to another.
"It grows equally well in rodent, human, and nonhuman primate (monkey) cells, making it a great candidate for a spillover event," Lednicky said in the statement.
While there are no confirmed cases of jeilongviruses causing diseases in humans, their close relation to henipaviruses (which includes the deadly Nipah virus) suggests the possibility of them having the ability to jump from animals to humans.
However, humans rarely come into contact with the species usually infected by jeilongviruses, so opportunities for jumps between species are limited. This is seen with another type of rodent virus, called hantaviruses , as cases are rarely seen in humans.
"Humans can develop severe to fatal illness if they get infected by hantaviruses, but so far, those types of infections remain rare and typically occur only among people who come into contact with rodent waste, often through airborne exposure to rodent urine or fecal material," DeRuyter said.
The researchers hope to further investigate the infective potential of Gainesville rodent jeilongvirus 1 to see if it truly can infect a wide number of species.
"Ideally, animal studies would be done to determine whether the virus causes illness in rodents and other small animals," Lednicky said. "Eventually, we need to determine if it has affected humans in Gainesville and the rest of Florida."
By keeping an eye on this new jeilongvirus, they can make sure it isn't becoming more dangerous to humans over time.
"This helps to set up infrastructure to evaluate the risk of novel pathogens or determine if the virus phenotypes are shifting to become more dangerous to their hosts," DeRuyter said.
Thankfully, despite Pepper the cat being patient zero for the new species, he seems unaffected by the virus.
"Cats, in general, evolved to eat rodents, and are not sickened by the viruses carried by rodents, but we have to do tests to see whether the virus affects pets, and humans," Lednicky said.
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