Specialists of the Novosibirsk center "Vector" have identified a new virus that can cause symptoms of fever.
The new pathogen was named Manych in honor of the Manych River in southern Russia. The virus was found in blood serum samples from people from medical institutions in the Rostov region with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF).
Manych can be infected from a tick bite. At the same time, together with CCHF, it is capable of causing a viral infection in humans with manifestations characteristic of fever. The main symptoms are chills and a high temperature of about 39 degrees.
It is clarified that Manych is closely related to the Jingmen tick virus (JMTV), which Chinese scientists discovered in 2014 in the salivary glands of various types of ticks. The peculiarity of viruses of this group is that their genome is divided into four segments, and for reproduction in the host cell, all four particles must combine. According to the infectious disease doctor, chief physician of Invitro-Siberia Andrei Pozdnyakov, in this way the virus can escape from the body's immune response.
According to experts, so far Manych does not pose a danger. At the same time, they do not exclude that it can mutate.