[Breaking] New Chinese virus may start a new merry go round !

First reported 2:11pm EDT

New virus detected in China infects 35 people

And this one has all the hallmarks of a biggie: throat swabs, virus isolation, metagenomics and a NEJM publication for XXL $ciece support

Langya henipavirus, AKA LayV, has been found in China’s Shandong and Henan provinces where animal exposure is present

Health authorities are on high alert after reports of a new virus have arisen in the People’s Republic of China.

Panel A shows the genome organization of Langya henipavirus (LayV). The diagram is drawn to scale, and the scale bar is shown at the bottom. The abbreviation nt denotes nucleotides. Panel B shows the phylogenetic analysis of LayV. The tree was constructed on the basis of the complete amino acid sequence of RNA-directed RNA polymerase (the L protein) from LayV and other recognized species in the family Paramyxoviridae with the use of the maximum likelihood method. Recognized species in the family Paramyxoviridae were included in the analysis. LayV sequences obtained from humans and shrews are marked with red and blue, respectively. The scale bar denotes the number of nucleotide substitutions per site. Bootstrap testing (1000 replicates) was performed, and the bootstrap values are indicated. CedV denotes Cedar virus, DARV Daeryong virus, GAKV Gamak virus, GhV Ghana virus, HeV Hendra virus, HeV-g2 HeV genotype 2, MojV Mojiang virus, NiV Nipah virus, and SDQD Shandong Qingdao. Panel C shows the provincial location, occupation, sex, and temporal pattern of patients with confirmed LayV infection.

At least 35 people have been infected by Langya henipavirus (LayV) in China’s Shandong and Henan provinces in the northeast, according to Taiwan's Centers for Disease Control.

Researchers who monitored the infections found that LayV symptoms appear to share similarities with the flu, including fever, cough, headache, muscle soreness, fatigue, loss of appetite and nausea.

The health agency cited a recent study from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), which is titled "A Zoonotic Henipavirus in Febrile Patients in China."

Twenty-six of the 35 patients were said to be infected with LayV only, meaning there were no other pathogens present.

"These 26 patients presented with fever (100% of the patients), fatigue (54%), cough (50%), anorexia (50%), myalgia (46%), nausea (38%), headache (35%), and vomiting (35%), accompanied by abnormalities of thrombocytopenia (35%), leukopenia (54%), and impaired liver (35%) and kidney (8%) function," researchers wrote.

The infected LayV patients reportedly had a "recent history of animal exposure in eastern China," according to the study’s summary.

Medical experts detected the new virus through throat swab samples, which were put under "metagenomic analysis and subsequent virus isolation."

The genome of LayV is reportedly composed of 18,402 nucleotides, and it has an identical genome organization to other henipaviruses in the Paramyxoviridae family – also known as a family of single-stranded RNA viruses.

Henipaviruses can infect humans and cause fatal diseases, according to the NEJM study. These viruses are typically found in bats, rodents and shrews.

So far, there hasn’t been human-to-human transmission of LayV and the patients weren’t in close contact.

"The infection in the human population may be sporadic," researchers wrote. "Contact tracing of 9 patients with 15 close-contact family members revealed no close-contact LayV transmission, but our sample size was too small to determine the status of human-to-human transmission for LayV."

The study noted that further assessments need to be conducted to see if LayV could have a cross-reaction with the Mojiang virus, which is another henipavirus that can cause lethal pneumonia.