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RE: How bats carry viruses without getting sick. Journal club

in StemSocial5 years ago

You deliver us this incredible info about how bats just fly around as “viral reservoirs” and end your post with :Well, that’s it for today! 😆 I loved it! It was also interesting to learn that that specific inflammatory response (or lack of) in bats is similar in both cases of pathogenic and cellular damage signals.

I’m now wondering what on earth makes bats sick!? I’m going to google that right now! :)

It’s always great to read your work @scienceblocks!
You take care :)

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 5 years ago  

Do you mind sharing the answer with me? I am too lazy for googling this, and this is an interesting question!

It's curious right? I had to persist on my search as, it appeared to me, the focus of what is out there about bats and diseases is on the fact that they are massive pathogens reservoirs. But then I found something which made for an interesting reading Ref..

In a nutshell some of the causes of death in urban European bats were found to be:

  1. Trauma (with young and female bats being more susceptible to this especially in the maternal season).
  2. Bacterial infection as a consequence of attacks by cats.
  3. Viral infection (a very low incidence of infection by lyssavirus and herpesvirus was found).
  4. Parasite infestation.

An interesting observation is that it appears that bats are more likely to succumb to (bacterial and viral) infections when they are already in a state of debilitation (e.g. due to injury).

So, there you go!
I wish you & the family a very good day 😊

 5 years ago  

Thanks for sharing this information with me. I may have a look to the reference later today. For now, I am writing on dilaton dark matter (future research paper; all results are there but we need to put that in words)...

Happy writing 😊