CSIRO scientists have played a key role in discovering that bats are the likely host of a new virus that can cause a serious but apparently non-fatal respiratory tract illness in humans.

As reported today in the internationally renowned journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), the discovery was made by a team from CSIRO Livestock Industries Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, Victoria, and the National Public Health Laboratory in Selangor, Malaysia.

The new virus was named Melaka after the location in Malaysia where it was isolated in early 2006 from a human patient who showed signs of fever and acute respiratory illness. This is the only recorded case of the Melaka virus infecting a human. Melaka virus is a type of reovirus (Respiratory Enteric Orphan viruses) that was first isolated in humans in the early 1950s and so named because they were not associated with any known disease.

According to the leader of the CSIRO team, Dr Linfa Wang, although the symptoms were severe and persisted for four days, there is no evidence to suggest Melaka virus is fatal.

The scientists at AAHL used scientific techniques including virology, serology, electron microscopy and molecular biology to establish whether the virus was a reovirus and if so, to what species group it belonged.

There are a number of different reovirus groups, however only two reoviruses have been isolated from bats in the past, Dr Wang says.

In 1968, Nelson Bay reovirus was isolated from a fruit bat (Pteropus poliocephalus) in New South Wales, Australia while in 1999 another reovirus, Pulau virus, was isolated from fruit bats (Pteropus hypomelanus) on Tioman Island in Malaysia.

Our research indicates Melaka virus is closely related to the two previously discovered bat-borne reoviruses, in particular Pulau virus, Dr Wang says.

The paper, entitled A previous
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Contact: Emma Wilkins
emma.wilkins@csiro.au
61-352-275-123
CSIRO Australia
26-Jun-2007