Temporal trends in the discovery of human viruses

In this context, it is worth noting that three new species were reported in two polyoma viruses, Ki and Wu, and a reovirus, Melaka Allander et al. Other viruses may have been reported but not yet classified. In practice, future rates of discovery will, of course, be affected by any major advances in virus detection technology or by any major shifts upwards or downwards in the effort expended on virus discovery programmes.

Indeed, it is striking that there have been no dramatic changes in the pattern of virus discovery for over 50 years; extrapolations from our data should therefore provide a useful benchmark for probable future discovery rates. The upper limit for N is finite but large; we cannot rule out hundreds of novel human viruses to be reported in the future.

There are two not mutually exclusive possible explanations for such a high level of diversity. First, it could reflect the largely unknown extant diversity of viruses in the non-human animal reservoirs that constitute the major source of emerging human pathogens Taylor et al. The majority of human viruses are known to be capable of infecting non-human hosts almost exclusively mammals and birds , and the animal origin of many apparently novel human viruses e. We have very limited knowledge of the diversity of viruses present in most mammal and bird species with most attention having been paid to viruses of domestic animals; Cleaveland et al.

An alternative explanation for a large pool of human viruses is that this reflects a high rate of evolution within a reservoir population of truly novel species capable of infecting humans.

This hypothesis is difficult to test directly without much more comprehensive sequence data from both human and non-human virus populations. We note that the finite upper limit for the current estimate of N does not necessarily imply that the process of virus discovery is not open-ended as a result of the evolution of new species since there could be a low background rate of virus evolution, which will remain once extant diversity has been fully revealed.

The balance between revealing extant diversity and the continual evolution of new species could be explored using a more complex model than equation 2. Although we cannot know in advance how big a threat they will pose, novel human viruses must be anticipated in public health planning and surveillance programmes for emerging infectious diseases King et al.

However, current approaches to virus discovery are largely passive, usually relying on investigation of reports of human disease with unfamiliar clinical symptoms and uncertain aetiology.

We consider that such calls are supported by the results reported here. We are grateful for the support from the Wellcome Trust M. Read article at publisher's site DOI : Biol Lett , 18 1 , 05 Jan Nat Microbiol , 6 12 , 24 Nov Cited by: 0 articles PMID: J Med Entomol , 58 6 , 01 Nov Arch Virol , 10 , 29 Jul Trends Immunol , 42 9 , 12 Jul To arrive at the top five similar articles we use a word-weighted algorithm to compare words from the Title and Abstract of each citation.

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Share this article Share with email Share with twitter Share with linkedin Share with facebook. Abstract On average, more than two new species of human virus are reported every year. We extrapolated the curve and generated an estimate of new species to be discovered by Free full text. Proc Biol Sci. Published online May PMID: Mark E.

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Open in a separate window. Figure 1. Table 1 List of viruses ordered by year of first report a of human infection. Figure 2.

Figure 3. Figure 4. Figure 5. Identification of a third human polyoma virus. P, Marriot F. C, Gaston K. J, Harris S. Access to Document Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'Temporal trends in the discovery of human viruses'. Together they form a unique fingerprint. View full fingerprint. Woolhouse, Mark E. U2 - More systematic virus discovery programmes, covering both humans and potential animal reservoirs of human viruses, should be considered.

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