Dictionary:

hantavirus

  (hăn'tə-vī'rəs)

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Any of a group of viruses carried by rodents that cause epidemic hemorrhagic fever and severe respiratory infections in humans.

[After the Hantan River, South Korea (near which Westerners were first infected by the virus in the 1950s).]

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Hantavirus refers both to a family of biological viruses that can be transmitted from animals to humans and to hantavirus pulmonary syndrome—the highly fatal infection caused by the viruses. Most often transmitted by exposure to the droppings of rodents, especially deer mice, infected individuals experience fever, nausea, vomiting, muscle and head aches, and, if left untreated, respiratory distress that can result in death. Other hantaviruses produce kidney disease.

As of 2003, an effective treatment for hantavirus was not yet available. Although long recognized in other countries, the disease was fairly rare in the United States, and the likelihood of infection was low. The first outbreak in the United States occurred in May 1993 in the Four Corners area of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, and by April 2001, 283 cases of the disease had been reported in thirty-one states.

Bibliography

Hjelle, B., S. Jenison, G. Mertz, et al. "Emergence of Hantaviral Disease in the Southwestern United States." Western Journal of Medicine 161, no. 5 (1994): 467–473.

Schmaljohn, C. S., and S. T. Nichol, eds. Hantaviruses. Berlin and New York: Springer Verlag, 2001.

A genus in the family Bunyaviridae.