The virus that has caused the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS has been traced from Egyptian Tomb Bat. Experts have long suspected this theory and with the recent study, they believe that they have finally established the link.
Dr. Ian Lipkin, lead author of the study from Columbia University, and his colleagues have tested animals in Saudi Arabia after the first known victim of MERS died. They have discovered the virus in a bat named Taphozous perforatus or the Egyptian Tomb bat. The bat was found a few kilometers away from the victim’s home.
Dr. Lipkin wrote in the report that MERS-like viruses have been found in animals but none were a genetic match. However, in this case, the virus found in the Egyptian Tomb Bat is identical in strain to the virus discovered in the first human case. Significantly, it’s from the locality of the first human case.
Conversely, only one out of the hundred bats tested was discovered to carry the deadly virus. But now, researchers can keep an eye on bats and probable outbreaks of the virus, Dr. Lipkin added.
Details of the study was published in the online journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
According to NBC News, Saudi deputy health minister Dr. Ziad Memish announced the breakthrough while he was speaking to a convention of experts hosted by the Center for Health Security of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The Egyptian Tomb Bat, a local across the Middle East and Africa, lives in stone buildings and caves and feeds on beetles and moths.
Saudi experts together with Lipkin’s team have been including food and other animals like cattle, sheep, camel and goats in their studies. Earlier this month, a European team accounted they had discovered antibodies to a virus comparable to MERS in camels from Oman, but there has been no cases of MERS in people in Oman.
