What is Nipah Virus?
Nipah virus that causes high fever, headache and coma in extreme cases is spread by fruit bats. Body fluids can cause human-to-human transmission of Nipah, which has a mortality rate of 70% and has no vaccine.How does the Nipah virus cause infection?
- Nipah and its viral cousin Hendra latch onto a proteins called ephrin-B2 and ephrin-B3 on the surface of nerve cells and the endothelial cells lining blood and lymph vessels, researchers have found. Nipah can also invade lung and kidney cells.
- Virologists who have studied Nipah’s behavior in animals think that in humans, it initially targets the respiratory system before spreading to the nervous system and brain. Most patients who die succumb to an inflammation of blood vessels and a swelling of the brain that occurs in the later stages of the disease.
- (This is informative purpose only. It was gathered from various websites and summarised here.)
