Studies of reservoir hosts for Marburg virus
Robert Swanepoel1, Sheilagh B Smit, Pierre E Rollin
1National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Sandringham, Republic of South Africa. bobs@nicd.ac.za
Emerging Infectious Diseases
|February 9, 2008
Abstract:
To determine reservoir hosts for Marburg virus (MARV), we examined the fauna of a mine in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The mine was associated with a protracted outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever during 1998-2000. We found MARV nucleic acid in 12 bats, comprising 3.0%-3.6% of 2 species of insectivorous bat and 1 species of fruit bat. We found antibody to the virus in the serum of 9.7% of 1 of the insectivorous species and in 20.5% of the fruit bat species, but attempts to isolate virus were unsuccessful.
