The devastating 2014 Ebola virus infection epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, and its subsequent spread to neighboring West African countries – Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal – and the United States and Spain has once again raised awareness about the pandemic potential of emerging viral infections.
To date more than 7000 people have died in the 2014 from Ebola virus infection, and there is every expectation that the West African epidemic will continue well into 2015. Moreover, Ebola is by no means the only major emerging virus infection with lethal epidemic or pandemic potential. Today, we are facing new major public health threats from MERS – Middle East Respiratory Syndrome – a coronavirus infection, which emerged as a human zoonosis from the Arabian Peninsula in 2012, and which could spread to the entire Middle East and North African region. In addition are new threats from hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) caused by enterovirus 71 and several different coxsackieviruses in Southeast Asia; severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV) infection from China; persistent West Nile virus infection; and several different influenza strains with pandemic potential, including H5N1 and H7N9, among others.
This special issue of Microbes and Infection focuses on these dangerous emerging viral threats, with an emphasis on recent developments to create new therapeutics, immunotherapeutics, and vaccines. Also reported here are unique viral syndromes resulting from some of the pathogens highlighted above.
Another key aspect of this special issue is some of the important research and development work now coming out of leading universities and research institutes in China. Many of these studies do not get the same level of press attention as those in North America or Europe. This special issue aspires to raise awareness of some of the cutting edge investigations now being pursued in China. For example, work on SFTSV in China is reported from Shandong University in Jinan; HFMD and MERS from the Institut Pasteur and Fudan University in Shanghai; and H7N9 and H5N1 influenza from the National Influenza Center, China CDC in Beijing, and Fudan University. Work on Ebola virus infection is also reported from the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong. However, the studies published here are also truly international and include lead investigators from Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia, USA), New York Blood Center, and the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital (Houston, Texas, USA).
An important theme arising from these 10 papers is how quickly the scientific community can respond to a rapidly emerging viral threat. The power of applying modern science, biotechnology and bioinformatics to the study of viruses was especially apparent after the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak in Guangdong Province, China in late 2002. Within a few months, the virus had been isolated, its receptor identified, and prototype vaccines were under development! But that was just the start. More than a decade later this incredible time frame is now being compressed even further for MERS, H7N9 influenza, and several of the other virus infections and syndromes described in this special issue.
We hope that the readers of Microbes and Infection find this special issue of use to their own virus research, or at the very least a helpful one-stop source for some of the latest updates on today's emerging viruses of pandemic potential.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.