Bourbon virus

Bourbon virus is an RNA virus in the genus Thogotovirus of the family Orthomyxoviridae, which is similar to Dhori virus and Batken virus. It was first identified in 2014 in a man from Bourbon County, Kansas, United States, who died after being bitten by ticks. The case is the eighth report of human disease associated with a thogotovirus globally, and the first in the Western hemisphere. As of May 2015, a case was discovered in Stillwater, Oklahoma (the patient fully recovered), and relatively little is known about the virus. No specific treatment or vaccine is available. The virus is suspected to be transmitted by ticks or insects, and avoidance of bites is recommended to reduce risk of infection. In June 2017 a 58-year-old female Missouri State Park employee died from an infection of the Bourbon virus after it had been misdiagnosed for a significant period of time. Discovery The virus was discovered in 2014 by Olga Kosoy, Amy Lambert and colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Fort Collins, Colorado, in a sample of blood from the case patient. Tests had previously ruled out a wide range of tick-borne diseases including anaplasmosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, Q fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and tularemia. During tests for Heartland virus, a recently discovered Phlebovirus known to be transmitted by ticks, prominent plaques, or areas where the cells were affected by virus infection, were observed on one-cell-thick cultures of African green monkey kidney cells. The plaques did not resemble the effects of Heartland virus, and the researchers hypothesized that they were the work of another virus. Recently developed "next-generation" sequencing techniques were employed to find novel viral RNA sequences in cell culture supernatants, similar to viruses of the genus Thogotovirus, family Orthomyxoviridae. Lambert, who worked on the sequencing, explained that these "state-of-the-art" techniques could be used to identify pathogens that older technologies could not detect. Next, real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction was used to confirm that this novel virus originated in the patient's blood sample. Finally, examining supernatants from the cell cultures under the electron microscope revealed virus particles of different shapes, including filaments and spheres.