Mysterious Chimpanzee Killer Virus Worries Experts as Possible Next Pandemic Source

A bacterium has been killing chimpanzees in Sierra Leone. Scientists are worried that the said bacterium could eventually spread to humans.

(Photo : Dominik Scythe on Unsplash)

Researchers led by a team at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published a study on Wednesday, announcing their findings in the journal "Nature Communications."

The study showed that fifty-six (56) chimpanzees died from a similarly mysterious illness at the Tacugama Chimpanzee sanctuary and wildlife reserve. They covered the deaths between 2005 and 2018. The disease causes both gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms that are "not subtle," lead researcher Tony Goldberg said.

"The chimpanzees would stagger and stumble, vomit, and have diarrhea," he said. "Sometimes they'd go to bed healthy and be dead in the morning."

After analyzing and screening DNAs and other bodily fluids for years, Goldberg's student Leah A. Owens isolated a bacterium in 68% of the samples from sick chimpanzees. Under a microscope, what she found on her slide was something that looked like that of the genus Sarcina, which, at the time, only included two other known species.

The bacterium Owens found is now called Sarcina troglodyte after the chimpanzee species it infected, Pan troglodytes.

The new disease named "epizootic neurologic and gastroenteric syndrome" (ENGS) is characterized by neurologic and gastrointestinal signs and results in the animals' death, even after medical treatment. Using a case-control study design, we show that ENGS is strongly associated with Sarcina infection. It has a fatality rate of 100%.

There are still a lot of unknown variables. For example, while it is known that the bacterium can live in soil, it is not understood how the Tacugama chimpanzees ingested it, why there is a prevalence in March, and whether or not the bacterium alone causes the illness.

In the hopes of saving the lives of these endangered animals, Tacugama veterinarians are treating sick chimpanzees with antacids, anticonvulsive, and antibiotics. Unfortunately, the animals never recovered.

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Epizootic Disease

An epizootic disease is an event in a nonhuman animal population analogous to an epidemic in humans. An epizootic may be restricted to a specific locale (an "outbreak"), general (an "epizootic"), or widespread ("panzootic").

High population density is a major contributing factor to epizootics. Aquaculture is sometimes plagued by disease because of the large number of fish confined to a small area. Scientists are worried that epizootic outbreaks can lead to the spread of zoonotic diseases.

Zoonotic Diseases

A zoonosis (plural zoonoses, or zoonotic diseases) is an infectious disease caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a bacterium, virus, parasite, or prion) that has jumped from an animal (usually a vertebrate) to a human. Typically, the first infected human transmits the infectious agent to at least one other human, who, in turn, infects others.

Recently, there has been a rise in the frequency of appearance of new zoonotic diseases.

According to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme and International Livestock Research Institute named: "Preventing the next pandemic - Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission," the causes are mostly environmental.

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