New killer virus discovered in Africa

ATLANTA — Scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus.

The so-called Lujo virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa in the fall. Four of them died, but a fifth survived, perhaps helped by a medicine recommended by the scientists.

It’s not clear how the first person became infected, but the bug comes from a family of viruses found in rodents, said Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in the discovery.

“This one is really, really aggressive” he said of the virus.

A paper on the virus by Lipkin and his collaborators was published online Thursday on in PLoS Pathogens.

The outbreak started in September, when a female travel agent who lives on the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, became ill with a fever-like illness that quickly grew much worse.

She was airlifted to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died.

A paramedic in Lusaka who treated her also became sick, was transported to Johannesburg and died. The three others infected were health care workers in Johannesburg.

Investigators believe the virus spread from person to person through contact with infected body fluids.

“It’s not a kind of virus like the flu that can spread widely,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The name given to the virus — Lujo — stems from Lusaka and Johannesburg.

Investigators in Africa thought the illness might be Ebola because some of the patients had bleeding in the gums and around needle injection sites, said Stuart Nichol, chief of the molecular biology lab in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Special Pathogens Branch.

Other symptoms include include fever, shock, coma and organ failure.

Genetic extracts of blood and liver from the victims were tested in the U.S. Tests determined it belonged to the arenavirus family, and that it is distantly related to Lassa fever, another disease found in Africa.