In an attempt to predict future pandemics, researchers linked to the Rocky Mountain laboratory in the United States are carrying out an innovative experiment with 50 fruit bats. The initiative is part of a larger project, which involves 70 researchers from seven countries.
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The work tries to discover how climate change and changes in the animals’ diet affect the survival of bats and their ability to transmit diseases.
The most accepted thesis for the origin of the Covid pandemic is that the Sars-CoV-2 virus emerged in bats, which contaminated intermediate mammals, which infected humans. Transmission from bats to humans is also considered quite possible and even likely.
Logging
The idea that deforestation and human occupation of wild areas can trigger pandemics is not new. In a previous study, it was concluded that nutritional stress caused by climate change led to transmission of the Hendra virus from Australian bats to horses and then to humans.
To study the influence of environmental pressure, the researchers are going to create different diets for the bats and then infect them with the influenza virus. The next step will be to evaluate the cycle of the virus in the animals.
“We are trying to understand what is in their immune systems that causes them to retain the virus and what is the situation in which they clear the virus,” said immunologist Agnieszka Rynda-Apple, Montana State University, in a statement.
The researchers believe that by unraveling how the virus acts in the group, it will be possible to implement preventive ecological measures to stop the emergence of new viruses.
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