Langya Henipavirus found in China: Is the new virus fatal? And six other questions answered

China has identified a new zoonotic virus named Langya henipavirus (LayV), with potential to cause acute liver and kidney infection. According to an article titled "A Zoonotic Henipavirus in Febrile Patients in China", published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), 35 people have been affected by the new Langya henipavirus so far.

Here are seven questions answered about the newly detected virus:

Where has it been found?

The investigation identified 35 patients with acute infection of the Langya henipavirus in China's Shandong and Henan provinces, and that 26 of them were infected with the Langya virus only, with no other pathogens.

Where has it come from?
Taiwan's CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang, while providing details of the serological survey conducted on domestic animals, said that 2 percent of the tested goats and 5 percent of the tested dogs were positive.
The test results of 25 wild animal species suggest that the shrew (a small insectivorous mammal resembling a mouse) might be a natural reservoir of the Langya henipavirus, as the virus was found in 27 percent of the shrew subjects, the CDC Deputy DG said.

What are the symptoms of Langya henipavirus?
These 26 patients presented with fever (100 per cent of the patients), fatigue (54 per cent), cough (50 per cent), anorexia (50 per cent), myalgia (46 per cent), nausea (38 per cent), headache (35 per cent), and vomiting (35 per cent), accompanied by abnormalities of thrombocytopenia (35 per cent), leukopenia (54 per cent), and impaired liver (35 per cent) and kidney (8 per cent) function.

Can it spread from person to person contact?
No significant spatial or temporal clustering of Langya henipavirus has been found till now, however, the reseachers said they were yet to determine whether the virus can be transmitted among humans.

The 35 patients in China did not have close contact with each other or a common exposure history, and contact tracing showed no viral transmission among close contacts and family, suggesting that human infections might be sporadic, the researchers said.

Contact tracing of 9 patients with 15 close-contact family members revealed no close-contact LayV transmission, however the sample size was too small to determine the status of human-to-human transmission for LayV, the researchers added.

Is Langya henipavirus fatal?
The cases of Langya henipavirus so far have not been fatal or very serious, so there is no need for panic, Wang Linfa, a Professor in the Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School was quoted as saying to Global Times. However, it is still a cause for alarm as many viruses that exist in nature have unpredictable results when they infect humans, Wang said.

Henipavirus can cause severe disease in animals and humans and are classified as biosafety Level 4 viruses with case fatality rates between 40-75 percent, according to the data from World Health Organization (WHO), highlighting that this is much higher than the fatality rate of the coronavirus.

Is there a vaccine for Langya henipavirus?
There is currently no vaccine or treatment for Henipavirus and the only treatment is supportive care to manage complications.

What is Henipavirus?
Henipaviruses belong to the family of paramyxoviruses. It is one of the important emerging causes of zoonosis in the Asia-Pacific region, Shanghai-based media thepaper.cn reported, noting that both Hendra virus (HeV) and Nipah virus (NiV) from this genus are known to infect humans with fruit bats as the natural host of both viruses.