About: Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a zoonotic virus originating in camels that has been causing significant mortality and morbidity in humans in the Arabian Peninsula. The epidemiology of the virus remains poorly understood, with hospital outbreaks, isolated cases with known exposure to camels and apparent community transmission occurring simultaneously. While traditional and seroepidemiological studies have been employed extensively throughout the epidemic, viral sequence data have not been utilised to their full potential in understanding transmission patterns within the outbreak. Here we use existing MERS-CoV sequence data to explore the phylodynamics of the virus in two of its known major hosts, humans and camels. We employ structured coalescent models to show that long-term MERS-CoV evolution occurs exclusively in camels, whereas humans act as a transient, and ultimately terminal host. By analysing the distribution of human outbreak cluster sizes and zoonotic introduction times we show that human outbreaks in the Arabian peninsula are driven by seasonally varying zoonotic transfer of viruses from camels. Without heretofore unseen evolution of host tropism, MERS-CoV is unlikely to become endemic in humans.   Goto Sponge  NotDistinct  Permalink

An Entity of Type : fabio:Abstract, within Data Space : wasabi.inria.fr associated with source document(s)

AttributesValues
type
value
  • Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a zoonotic virus originating in camels that has been causing significant mortality and morbidity in humans in the Arabian Peninsula. The epidemiology of the virus remains poorly understood, with hospital outbreaks, isolated cases with known exposure to camels and apparent community transmission occurring simultaneously. While traditional and seroepidemiological studies have been employed extensively throughout the epidemic, viral sequence data have not been utilised to their full potential in understanding transmission patterns within the outbreak. Here we use existing MERS-CoV sequence data to explore the phylodynamics of the virus in two of its known major hosts, humans and camels. We employ structured coalescent models to show that long-term MERS-CoV evolution occurs exclusively in camels, whereas humans act as a transient, and ultimately terminal host. By analysing the distribution of human outbreak cluster sizes and zoonotic introduction times we show that human outbreaks in the Arabian peninsula are driven by seasonally varying zoonotic transfer of viruses from camels. Without heretofore unseen evolution of host tropism, MERS-CoV is unlikely to become endemic in humans.
subject
  • Virology
  • Zoonoses
  • Arabian Peninsula
  • Historical regions
part of
is abstract of
is hasSource of
Faceted Search & Find service v1.13.91 as of Mar 24 2020


Alternative Linked Data Documents: Sponger | ODE     Content Formats:       RDF       ODATA       Microdata      About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data]
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3229 as of Jul 10 2020, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu), Single-Server Edition (94 GB total memory)
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2025 OpenLink Software