Predicting Outbreaks – What We Can Learn From Dog Virus Epidemics

by Simon Frueh

“KILLER VIRUS HITS DOGS” headlined newspapers in 1978 reporting the outbreak of a pandemic of unknown origin. It spread rapidly across the globe and infected approximately 90 percent of the global dog population. Puppies were most affected, showing severe vomiting and diarrhea that killed many of them.

What caused such devastation? Thanks to Cornell researchers, we now know this disease as Canine Parvovirus (CPV), and dogs are now routinely vaccinated against it. In fact, Cornell scientists identified the causative viral agent and were able to develop a vaccine to prevent further spread of the epidemic within two years.

CPV emerged from a well-known cat virus called Feline Panleukopenia Virus (FPV) and only required a few mutations in the genome to enable the virus to infect dogs instead of cats, which begs the question: how does a mutation in the viral genome suddenly enable a virus to cross species barriers and infect a new host?

Virologist Dr. Colin Ross Parrish and his team are now getting to the heart of these questions at the James A. Baker Institute for Animal Health at Cornell University. His research team focuses on three viruses that originally exclusively infected other animals and then gained the ability to infect dogs: CPV and two different canine influenza viruses (CIV H3N8 and H3N2). Parrish and his team use these viruses as a model to study the evolution, emergence and mechanisms of viruses mutating to jump species.

Short URL: http://caninechronicle.com/?p=128369

Posted by chesliepickett on Jul 10 2017. Filed under Health & Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.