Three men who were breeding squirrel, died from a possible virus that may have been passed on by the squirrels. The men died from brain inflammation.
This new virus is part of a group of viruses known as ‘bornaviruses’ that generally infects animals like sheep, horses and birds. There is a debate amongst researchers if these viruses can cause diseases in people and according to new findings they do. Furthermore, they bring up questions whether this virus “represents an emerging threat” to the population of the region, according to a statement from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
All three of the breeders had been men in their 60s and 70s and were each other’s friends and used to breed variegated squirrels which at times are kept as exotic pets. At least two of the men had been scratched and bitten by their squirrels.
All three of them had experienced encephalitis, an inflammation in the brain, between 2011 and 2013, and it is generally caused by a virus. They had fever, chills, weakness and even confusion and difficulty in walking at one point. They all had been hospitalized and required intensive care although eventually they all went into a coma and died within 2 to 4 months of their first emergence of the symptoms.
The tests for the general causes of encephalitis didn’t expose the problem at first although a more detailed genetic test of one of the squirrels owned by breeders had been able to a new kind of bornavirus and the researchers named it VSBV-1.
Antibodies to the virus had been found in the blood and spinal fluid of one of the men which indicated that the men’s fatal brain inflammation had been most likely caused by the virus, as identified through further study, said researchers.
The researchers from the Friedrich Loeffler Institute in Germany, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, that, “VSBV-1 is likely to be a previously unknown zoonotic pathogen transmitted by the variegated squirrel.”
