Nipah virus: pathogenesis, genome, diagnosis, and treatment
Rishav Madhukalya, Urvashi Yadav, Hilal Ahmad Parray, Nisha Raj, Santhik Subhasingh Lupitha, Vivek Kumar, Anjali Saroj, Vidushi Agarwal, Dilip Kumar, Supratik Das, Rajesh Kumar
Abstract
The emergence of novel pathogenic viral strains and their outbreaks has been reported more frequently in the last few decades, possibly due to rapid urbanization and changing climatic conditions. Newly emerging viruses such as Ebola virus, Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus, Zika virus, swine flu virus, Lassa fever virus, Marburg virus, coronaviruses, Nipah virus (NiV), and Rift Valley fever (RVF) virus, are serious threats to human health and have been classified as pathogens of global concern (Rizzardini et al. 2018 ). Their ability to spread quickly may lead to an international public health crisis similar to COVID- 19 (Sweileh 2017 ). These viral outbreaks are responsible for high mortality, morbidity, and economic burden worldwide. Old viruses such as influenza have the potential to resurface and pose new epidemic and pandemic threats (Taubenberger and Morens 2010 ). Viruses employ various strategies to infect humans, either by direct or by indirect means or through different reservoir host animals. Despite implementing stringent precautionary measures, the COVID- 19 pandemic appeared to be virtually unstoppable, leading to its spread throughout the globe. Similar to SARS-CoV- 2, many viral pathogens with increased propensity for causing an epidemic, such as NiV, Ebola, and Middle East respiratory coronavirus (MERS-CoV), originated from bats, and later spread by cross-species transmission through intermediate hosts (Mohd et al. 2016 ; Zhou et al. 2020 ; Letko et al. 2020 ).