Insect pathogens as biological control agents: Back to the future.

A rapid simple technique for the diagnosis of rotavirus has been developed based on the sensitive detection of rotavirus double-stranded RNA genome segments separated in polyacrylamide gels. The method utilizes a recently described ultrasensitive silver stain for polypeptides, which can also detect subnanogram amounts of nucleic acid. The sensitivity of the technique is comparable with that of electron microscopy or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

Rapid diagnosis of rotavirus infection by direct detection of viral nucleic acid in silver-stained polyacrylamide gels.

Summary: Hantaviruses are enzootic viruses that maintain persistent infections in their rodent hosts without apparent disease symptoms. The spillover of these viruses to humans can lead to one of two serious illnesses, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome. In recent years, there has been an improved understanding of the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and natural history of these viruses following an increase in the number of outbreaks in the Americas. In this review, current concepts regarding the ecology of and disease associated with these serious human pathogens are presented. Priorities for future research suggest an integration of the ecology and evolution of these and other host-virus ecosystems through modeling and hypothesis-driven research with the risk of emergence, host switching/spillover, and disease transmission to humans.

A Global Perspective on Hantavirus Ecology, Epidemiology, and Disease

Infections with herpes simplex virus (HSV) are extremely common. HSV infection may be asymptomatic or may cause any one of a wide variety of disease syndromes. In this review, the physical properties and mode of replication of HSV are briefly described, and an outline of the different clinical manifestations associated with HSV infection is presented. Principles of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of these infections are also discussed.

Herpes simplex virus infections.

A compartmental model is presented for the spread of HIV in a homosexual population divided into subgroups by degree of sexual activity. The model includes constant recruitment rates for the susceptibles in the subgroups. It incorporates the long infectious period of HIV-infected individuals and allows one to vary infectiousness over the infectious period. A new pattern of mixing, termed preferred mixing, is defined, in which a fraction of a group’s contacts can be reserved for within-group contacts, the remainder being subject to proportional mixing. The fraction reserved may differ among groups. In addition, the classic definition of reproductive number is generalized to show that for heterogeneous populations in general the endemic threshold is BDc,, where cr is the mean number of contacts per infective. The most important finding is that the pattern of contacts between the different groups has a major effect on the spread of HIV, an effect inadequately recognized or studied heretofore.

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R.E.F. Matthews

Papers

The Classification and Nomenclature of Viruses