Marburg Virus

1
Marburg Virus

• By Michelle Pate

2
Introduction

• Order Mononegavirales
• Family Filoviridae
• 1st discovered in 1967 with outbreaks in Germany
  and Yugoslavia
• thought to originate from African green monkeys
• several sporadic outbreaks occurred over the next
  15 years
• Host-reservoir relationships have yet to be
  determined
• source of the infection and natural life cycle is
  unknown

3
Introduction

• Causes hemorrhagic fever
• 2 other viruses within this family that cause
  hemorrhagic fever
• Closely related to Ebola virus
• morphologically identical
• antibodies made against Ebola dont protect
  against Marburg virus
• Possible risk of being used as biological warfare

4
Replication

• Negative-sense RNA virus with monopartite genome
• must change viral genome into mRNA before
  infection can occur
• Flexible virion that assumes characteristic comma
  and semicircular shapes
• Little is known about the details of the
  replication cycle
• Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) serves as a
  model of replication for all Mononegavirales

5
Disease and Pathology

• Causes suppression of innate immune responses in
  macrophages and dendritic cells
• Prevents the activation of T cells
• Leads to massive apoptosis of lymphocytes
• Infected macrophages lead to severe hemorrhagic
  fever

6
Disease and Pathology

• Spread through contaminated blood, respiratory
  aerosols, and body fluid contamination
• Incubation period is generally 5-7 days (may
  exceed 2 weeks however)
• Patients experience fever, chills, headache,
  muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain,
  and diarrhea

7
Treatment and Prevention

• Strengthening and modifying host responses are
  essential for future treatment methods
• Several methods have been used but are not fully
  defined
• the use of heparin to combat intravascular
  coagulation
• specific antibody-containing plasma
• interferon in the treatment of acute disease

8
Treatment and Prevention

• No current vaccine available
• Primate studies with prime-booster techniques
  appear to be promising
• Index cases are unable to prevent for lack of
  knowledge secondary cases can be controlled by
  isolation and protective practices