Chapare virus is a virus from the family '' Arenaviridae'' which causes a

hemorrhagic fever Viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) are a diverse group of diseases. "Viral" means a health problem caused by infection from a virus, " hemorrhagic" means to bleed, and "fever" means an unusually high body temperature. Bleeding and fever are comm ...

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 virus, bacterium, parasite, fungi, or prion) that can jump from a non-human vertebrate to a human. When h ...

mammarenavirus infection occurred in the village of Samuzabeti, Chapare Province,

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

, 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 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 (or surgical) 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 tr ...

and a gastroenterologist. 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 * Disease vector, an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematics a ...

is suspected to be a

rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the Order (biology), order Rodentia ( ), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and Mandible, lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal specie ...

, probably the small-eared pygmy rice rat.

Virology

The Chapare virus is an enveloped virus with a bi-segmented single-stranded ambisense

RNA Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule that is essential for most biological functions, either by performing the function itself (non-coding RNA) or by forming a template for the production of proteins (messenger RNA). RNA and deoxyrib ...

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 Sabiá virus, an arenavirus. Sabiá virus is one of the arenaviruses from South America to cause hemorrhagic fever. It shares a common progenitor with Junín virus, Machupo ...

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, ecchymoses, 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