News Release 7-Jan-2020
The Lancet Infectious Diseases: Scientists identify and characterise eight more deaths from Borna disease virus and suggest more cases could be identified

A virus that jumps from shrews to humans could have been causing encephalitis unnoticed for decades in regions where the host shrew lives in the wild. how the disease virus jumps from shrews to humans is unclear. Symptoms in infected people start with a fever, headache and confusion, and continue with signs of brain disease such as an unsteady gait, memory loss, seizures, and a progressive loss of consciousness. In the new cases, symptoms deteriorated rapidly following patients' admission to hospital, leading to deep coma and death. All eight patients died within 16 to 57 days of admission.