Thank-you! I am looking into proposing making a vaccine for Nipah virus for my mock grant for my prelims. Nipah virus is transmitted from animals to humans, such as through domestic pigs to humans and can cause serious disease such as encephalitis leading to neurological dysfunctions or fatality. So far no drugs or vaccines in use for humans.

Hi there Jennifer, I'll be glad to help you regarding Nipah virus......please don't hesitate to contact me [email protected]

Thank-you and I will be contacting you!

what do you want to know

Perfect, thanks!

Does anyone know which animal model is best to use based on its similarity to infection in humans? Bats and pigs, which are also hosts wouldn't make very good models. I have read some papers where they use cats..

Cats are the best model, but they are difficult to handle in bsl4, the syrian golden hamster model is much better in this sense

Any one pls tell, Nipah virus is transmitted from animals such has deer,dog to humans

Dogs can get nipah virus, but I don't think there have been any cases of transmission from dogs to humans. I am not sure about deer

Now that I think about it, they have only seen serological evidence of Nipah in a dog. They did not see any disease pathology or the typical symptoms. I would say that dogs could get infected, but fight off the virus and would be unlikely to transmit to humans.

Thank u for ur information

I have a question, if anyone can help me. How is Nipah virus recognized by the immune system? Is this virus able to be taken up, digested and presented on antigen presenting cells? Or is the only recognition though pattern recognition receptors? I just cant figure out how the immune system attacks this virus and produces antibodies and neutralizing antibodies

In fact as 50% of people survive infection they are able to mount a good immune response to the virus, but a few percentage of survivors have relapse of encephalitis even month after initial onset of symptoms.

Well recently it has been reported that infections in the last 2 years have a 100% mortality rate. You are correct though, the immune system does mount an immune response, based on the surface glyoproteins. Nipah virus fuses to cell membranes, and the only antigen presenting cell it can infect are dendritic cells, but not very well. When the virus fuses the glycoproteins stay on the plasma membrane. So does a T cell just recognize those glycoproteins?

Hi Jennifer,

My Master project was about Nipah Virus and you can find my publication entitled: Functional analysis of the L Protein of Nipah Virus Using Minigenome System. here is the link

http://fundamentaljournals.org/ijfps/downloads/52_IJFPS_Sept_2013_36_42.pdf

Nipah virus infection (NiV) is a viral infection caused by the Nipah virus. Symptoms from infection vary from none to fever, cough, headache, shortness of breath, and confusion. This may worsen into a coma over a day or two. Complications can include inflammation of the brain and seizures following recovery.

Kind regards