CSIRO scientists are trying to find out how bats can resist viruses which are deadly to humans and other animals.

Discovery of new bat-derived virus in humans

A collaborative research team provides the first report of an orthoreovirus in association with an acute human respiratory disease.

• 15 October 2007 | Updated 14 October 2011

• A new virus
• What we did

A new virus

Scientists at CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) have played a key role in discovering that bats are the likely host of a new virus that can cause a serious but apparently non-fatal respiratory tract illness in humans.

Working with collaborators from the National Public Health Laboratory in Malaysia, the new virus was named Melaka after the location where it was isolated in early 2006. 

The virus was isolated from a human patient who showed signs of fever and acute respiratory illness. This is the only recorded case of the Melaka virus infecting humans.

Retrospective research revealed that several other members of the patient’s family developed similar symptoms approximately one week later and showed serological evidence of infection with the same virus.

The delay in symptom onset suggests human-to-human transmission took place.

Melaka virus is a type of reovirus (Respiratory Enteric Orphan viruses) that was first isolated in humans in the early 1950s and so named because they were not associated with any known disease.

Although the symptoms were severe and persisted for four days, there is no evidence to suggest Melaka virus is fatal.

What we did

The scientists at AAHL used scientific techniques including virology, serology, electron microscopy and molecular biology to establish whether the virus was a reovirus and, if so, to what species group it belonged.

Bats were examined as a host, not only because previous unknown viruses have originated in bats, but because epidemiological tracing revealed the family were exposed to a bat in the house one week prior to the patient showing clinical symptoms of the virus.

AAHL plans to continue working closely with the group in the National Public Health Laboratory and other Malaysian scientists to identify how widely distributed the virus is and how many related viruses there are in the bat reovirus group.

The discovery of Melaka virus will make future diagnoses of unknown viruses more accurate as it can now be added to the list of new and emerging viruses. 

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, July 2007.

Read the paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) [external link] and learn more about Geelong: Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) (Vic).