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Synchronous shedding of multiple bat paramyxoviruses coincides with peak periods of Hendra virus spillover

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posted on 2019-09-07, 15:32 authored by Alison J. Peel, Konstans Wells, John Giles, Victoria Boyd, Amy Burroughs, Daniel Edson, Gary Crameri, Michelle L. Baker, Hume Field, Lin-Fa Wang, Hamish McCallum, Raina K. Plowright, Nicholas Clark

Within host-parasite communities, viral co-circulation and co-infections of hosts are the norm, yet studies of significant emerging zoonoses tend to focus on a single parasite species within the host. Using a multiplexed paramyxovirus bead-based PCR on urine samples from Australian flying foxes, we show that multi-viral shedding from flying fox populations is common. We detected up to nine bat paramyxoviruses shed synchronously. Multi-viral shedding infrequently coalesced into an extreme, brief and spatially restricted shedding pulse, coinciding with peak spillover of Hendra virus, an emerging fatal zoonotic pathogen of high interest. Such extreme pulses of multi-viral shedding could easily be missed during routine surveillance yet have potentially serious consequences for spillover of novel pathogens to humans and domestic animal hosts. We also detected co-occurrence patterns suggestive of the presence of interactions among viruses, such as facilitation and cross-immunity. We propose that multiple viruses may be interacting, influencing the shedding and spillover of zoonotic pathogens. Understanding these interactions in the context of broader scale drivers, such as habitat loss, may help predict shedding pulses of Hendra virus and other fatal zoonoses.

Funding

This work was core-funded by AgriFutures Australia (formerly known as Rural Research and Development Corporation) under Grant PRJ-008190, and by the State of Queensland, the State of New South Wales and the Commonwealth of Australia under the National Hendra Virus Research Program; and in part by a Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation OCE Science Leader Award (Lin-Fa Wang) and an Australian Post-Graduate Award (Amy Burroughs); a Queensland Government Accelerate Postdoctoral Research Fellowship; the DARPA PREEMPT program Cooperative Agreement # D18AC00031; the U.S. National Science Foundation (DEB-1716698); a Princeton IDEAS Research Exchange fellowship; a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT (Cooperative Agreement No. AID-OAA-A-14-00102) (Hume Field); the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIAID Award Numbers R01AI110964 (Hume Field), and P20GM103474 and P30GM110732 [Raina Plowright]); and a USDA Hatch 1015891. The content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the U.S. government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.

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