Microbiology and Immunology 2500A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: West Nile Fever, Viral Pathogenesis, Ectromelia Virus
23 Dec 2016
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The skin is not a good host due to many chemical properties (eg. salty) But the main reason for why it"s a shitty host for viruses is that skin is dead! If the host is dead you can"t get replication. No visible symptoms but the immune system has been activated. Replication and transmission are still highly likely and they are virus dependent. Flavivridae - west nile virus (+ssrna with envelope) Transmitted/spread by mosquitos - prevention was through spraying insecticides. Didn"t know what was happening - the center for disease control couldnt test for a virus they didn"t have in their collection! 1% of infected individuals - neuroinvasive illness caused by deadly encephalitis. But how did this virus even make it to north america: used deep sequencing and pcr to figure this out, figured out the the west nile virus in new york is identical to the one in israel.
