2023-11-16 08:14:19
Scientists fear that increasing global warming will also pose a major health threat. A variety of previously unknown ones Viruses and pathogens might be trapped in the still frozen earth.
New deadly virus in ice? That’s what researchers say
The term “permafrost” describes ground that has been frozen for two or more consecutive years. There are also areas in Siberia that have had this condition for over 650,000 years. Hidden within is life in countless quantities. Hundreds of thousands of dormant microbial species, like a virus, can hide in a single gram. However, their actual identity is largely a mystery.
“There’s a lot we don’t know and what few have studied is the permafrost,” explained Birgitta Evengård, professor of infectious diseases at Umeå University in Sweden, opposite Newsweek. Previous studies have repeatedly provided brief insights into which viruses lie dormant in the permafrost. These include the “Pandora virus,” which only infects amoebas and has survived in frozen ground for over 30,000 years.
“If amoeba viruses can survive in permafrost for so long, it strongly suggests that viruses that infect animals or humans might remain infectious under the same conditions,” Newsweek quoted Jean-Michel Claverie, the leader of the Pandoravirus study, as saying.
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Climate change might unleash this
Claverie also explains what exactly we humans might expect when the permafrost thaws: “Viruses from extinct diseases such as smallpox, the ever-present anthrax through spore-contaminated areas and also the accelerated spread of diseases that are already known to occur in today’s world Arctic, such as tularemia, a serious bacterial infection, or tick-borne encephalitis.”
Evengård also points out that we also have to reckon with a large number of pathogens that are completely unknown to us today: “Deep down in the permafrost there must be microbes – especially viruses, but also bacteria – that have existed long before the existence of the Homo sapiens were on earth”.
These may include ancient viruses for which we have neither natural immunity nor effective vaccines or treatments. This uncertainty has a name among researchers: “There is a factor X that we really don’t know very much regarding,” said Evengård.
Sources: Newsweek
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