Monday 4 February 2019

Human respiratory viruses continue to spread in wild chimpanzees



Date:  January 22, 2019
Source:  University of Wisconsin-Madison
Less than two years after the first report of wild chimpanzees in Uganda dying as a result of a human "common cold" virus, a new study has identified two other respiratory viruses of human origin in chimpanzee groups in the same forest.
Writing this week (Jan. 21, 2019) in the journal Emerging Microbes and Infections, a team led by Tony Goldberg, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine and an expert on emerging pathogens in animals, describes two simultaneous outbreaks of respiratory illness in chimpanzees in the wild, one of which was lethal. Goldberg is also associate director for research at UW-Madison's Global Health Institute.
The outbreaks affected different chimp communities in the same forest at the same time, between December 2016 and February 2017, prompting suspicion that the outbreaks had a common cause.


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