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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