Rodent Corona .. a new virus spread in Sweden

It appears that bats and pangolins are not the only wildlife harboring novel coronaviruses, as rodents can also carry viruses that are sometimes able to jump into humans.

Among the red-backed Swedish bank voles (Myodes glareolus), researchers have now identified a common and widespread virus they named the Grimsö virus, inspired by its location.

We do not know if the newly discovered virus poses a threat in any way to humans;

However, the findings are a good reminder of why we need to monitor wildlife viruses, especially those carried by animals that live in close proximity to us.

“We still do not know the potential threats that the Grimsö virus may pose to public health,” says virologist Aki Lindfest, from Uppsala University in Sweden. However, based on our observations and previous coronaviruses identified among bank voles, there is good reason to continue to monitor the coronavirus. among wild rodents.

The bank voles are the most common rodent found in Europe.

Their paths often intersect with our own species, a well-known host of the Pumala virus, which causes the hemorrhagic fever known as epidemic nephritis in humans.

When seeking refuge from bad weather, rats are known to take shelter in human buildings, and this increases our risk of contracting a disease that they carry into our homes.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Lundvist and his colleagues were trying to monitor wildlife diseases among mice, to better predict when their viruses might spread.

And given the relentless pace of climate change and habitat destruction, there is every opportunity to increase our interactions with mice in the future.

Between 2015 and 2017, researchers in Uppsala examined 450 bank voles from a site west of Stockholm called Grimsö.

By testing the creatures for coronaviruses, the team found a new betacoronavirus circulating in 3.4% of the sample.

Betacoronaviruses are usually found among bats and rodents, and when they jump to humans, they are responsible for causing colds and respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.

The new vole virus has not been detected in humans yet, but if COVID-19 knows anything, we need to increase wildlife disease surveillance to prevent further outbreaks.

Over the course of three years, researchers in Sweden found several distinct viral strains of Grimsö virus circulating among bank voles.

Moreover, other closely related coronaviruses were widely distributed among mice in other parts of Europe, such as France, Germany and Poland, suggesting that these organisms are natural incubators of the disease.

The highly variable nature of the Grimsö virus is a bad sign.

It indicates that the virus easily adapts to new hosts and habitats.

The various strains present in the circulation could have originally come from bank voles, or they may have jumped from another species.

Given that bank voles is one of the most common rodent species in Sweden and Europe, the results indicate that the Grimsö virus may spread widely in bank voles, and also indicate the importance of covert surveillance of coronaviruses in wild small mammals, especially in wild rodents, According to the researchers.

Other studies have recently warned that human exploitation of wild places has directly increased the risk of transmitting animal diseases to humans.

This danger was particularly notable among animals such as bats, rodents, and primates, which have large populations and are easily adapted to human environments.

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