Lessons learned from the hantaviruses and other hemorrhagic fever viruses

In recent years, numerous previously known infections pathogens and their associated diseases have been recognized. Among these newly identified agents are the viruses that cause the hemorrhagic fevers, including Sin Nombre virus, the etiologic agent of the 1993 outbreak of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the American Southwest. Epidemiologic and laboratory investigations of the hemorrhagic fevers and their etiologic agents provide lessons that may be used collectively as a paradigm of the nature of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.