The authors would like to express their gratitude
to Dr. Carmen Penido at the Laboratory of Applied Pharmacology (Farmanguinhos, FIOCRUZ) for her critical reading of this manuscript, Mr. Andre Benedito da Silva for animal care, Mrs. Ana Lucia Neves da Silva for her help with the microscopy, and Mrs. Moira Elizabeth Schottler and Mrs. Claudia Buchweitz for their assistance in editing the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the Centres of Excellence Program (PRONEX/FAPERJ), the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Carlos Chagas Filho, the Rio de Janeiro State selleck kinase inhibitor Research Supporting Foundation (FAPERJ), the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), the São Paulo State Research Supporting Foundation (FAPESP), and Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ). “
“The corresponding author regrets the incorrect spelling of one of the authors’, S. Hari Subramanian. The correct spelling is Hari H. Subramanian. And also, both the authors Z.G. Huang and H.H. Subramanian contributed equally to this work. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused. “
“Hendra virus and Nipah virus are
recently recognized bat-borne paramyxoviruses, each of which have repeatedly emerged causing significant morbidity and mortality in both animal and human populations since the mid to late 1990’s. Hendra virus was isolated in Australia from fatal cases of severe respiratory disease in horses and one person in the Brisbane suburb of Hendra in September, 1994, and was shown to be distantly
related Fasudil molecular weight to measles virus and other morbilliviruses (Murray et al., 1995). The same virus STK38 had also caused fatal infections in horses a month prior in Mackay, Australia, but this emergence was only recognized when one individual who was unknowingly exposed to the infected horses at that time developed a recrudescence of fatal meningoencephalitis 13 months later (O’Sullivan et al., 1997 and Wong et al., 2009). Hendra virus’ close relative, Nipah virus, emerged in peninsular Malaysia in 1998–99, in a large outbreak of respiratory disease in pigs along with numerous cases of encephalitis among pig farmers, eventually resulting in more than 100 human fatalities. Genetic and serological studies revealed the relatedness of this new virus to Hendra virus (Chua et al., 2000). Hendra virus and Nipah virus now represent the prototype species of the new genus Henipavirus within the paramyxovirus family ( Wang et al., 2013). Since their discovery, both Hendra virus and Nipah virus have continued to repeatedly cause spillover events into animals and/or people. Hendra virus infection among horses in Australia has occurred annually since 2006 and in total there have now been 7 human cases of which 4 have been fatal (Anonymous, 2009b and Playford et al., 2010). In all 7 human cases, Hendra virus was transmitted from infected horses to humans.