''Chapare mammarenavirus'' or Chapare virus is a virus from the family ''
Arenaviridae'' which causes a
hemorrhagic fever in humans known as Chapare hemorrhagic fever. It was first described after an outbreak of a novel
zoonotic
A zoonosis (; plural zoonoses) or zoonotic disease is an infectious disease of humans caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a bacterium, virus, parasite or prion) that has jumped from a non-human (usually a vertebrate) to a human. ...
mammarenavirus infection occurred in the village of Samuzabeti,
Chapare Province,
Bolivia, in January 2003. A small number of people were infected and one person died.
In 2019, nine people became infected with the virus in the
La Paz regional area, four of whom died.
Nosocomial
A hospital-acquired infection, also known as a nosocomial infection (from the Greek , meaning "hospital"), is an infection that is acquired in a hospital or other health care facility. To emphasize both hospital and nonhospital settings, it is ...
and human-to-human transmission of the virus occurred in at least three of the cases which resulted in the death of a
medical intern
A medical intern is a physician in training who has completed medical school and has a medical degree but does not yet have a license to practice medicine unsupervised. Medical education generally ends with a period of practical training similar t ...
and a
gastroenterologist
Gastroenterology (from the Greek gastḗr- “belly”, -énteron “intestine”, and -logía "study of") is the branch of medicine focused on the digestive system and its disorders. The digestive system consists of the gastrointestinal tract, ...
. Like other members of the Arenavirus family, the specific zoonotic reservoir and primary transmission
vector
Vector most often refers to:
*Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction
*Vector (epidemiology), an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism
Vector may also refer to:
Mathematic ...
is suspected to be a
rodent
Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are n ...
, probably the
small-eared pygmy rice rat.
Virology
The Chapare virus is an enveloped virus with a bi-segmented single-stranded ambisense
RNA genome. The two RNA segments are denoted Small (S) and Large (L). It belongs to the New World Clade B lineage of mammarenaviruses and is most closely related to the
Sabia virus
Brazilian hemorrhagic fever (BzHF) is an infectious disease caused by ''Brazilian mammarenavirus'', an arenavirus. ''Brazilian mammarenavirus'' is one of the arenaviruses from South America to cause hemorrhagic fever. It shares a common progenit ...
.
Symptoms
After an incubation period of around 9–19 days, initial symptoms include fever, malaise, headache, myalgia, back pain, dizziness, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. The disease often progresses to include hemorrhagic and neurological symptoms, such as gingival hemorrhage, anaemia, leukopaenia, confusion, seizures, echymoses, bleeding from mucous membranes, hemorrhagic shock and multi-organ failure.
Chapare virus RNA was detected in the blood, urine, conjunctiva, semen and in broncho-alveolar and nasopharyngeal samples of the infected patients. Those who survived often had prolonged residual neurological symptoms. Viral RNA was detected in survivors up to 170 days after infection and infectious Chapare virus was obtained in a semen sample of one patient 86 days after symptom onset.
Treatment
Treatment relies mostly on supportive care and early diagnosis. Specific antiviral therapy for Chapare virus infection has yet to be properly investigated.
References
External links
{{Taxonbar, from=Q24719938, from2=Q839212
Hemorrhagic fevers
Arenaviridae