Recently while driving north on the New York State Thruway I passed the exit for the town of Coxsackie, NY (population 8,884). I grabbed my camera and photographed the exit sign, and reminded myself to write about the virus named after this small town. In the summer of 1947 there ...

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dick Despommier, Alan Dove, and Jennifer Drahos In episode #44 of the podcast "This Week in Virology", Vincent, Dick, Alan, and Jennifer Drahos consider Marburg virus in Egyptian fruit bats, bacterial citrus pathogen found in shipping facility, canine parvovirus in Michigan, Relenza-resistant influenza virus, new HIV from ...

For the first 60 years of virus discovery, there was no system for classifying viruses. Consequently viruses were named haphazardly, a practice that continues today. Vertebrate viruses may be named according to the associated diseases (poliovirus, rabies), the type of disease caused (murine leukemia virus), or the sites in the ...

Marburg virus has been isolated from Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) living in Kitaka Cave, Uganda, demonstrating that bats are a natural reservoir of the virus. Marburg virus, the founding member of the Filoviridae, is an enveloped virus with a negative-strand RNA genome. Other members of the filovirus family are the ...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would like to know what the public feels about the impending H1N1 influenza vaccination program this fall. The agency plans to conduct ten meetings in different parts of the United States to learn if the public would like a massive vaccination campaign, or ...