NIPAH -Virus: A review

Zoonotic diseases have the potential to cause an epidemic in a short time period and due to changing ecological and environmental conditions, zoonoses have been on the rise posing a threat to human health. The emergence of Nipah virus in Malaysia in 1998-99 is a classical example of emerging zoonosis. Following the outbreak in Malaysia, there were major cases of NIPAH in India and Bangladesh throughout the past two decades with high fatality rate. The natural host of the virus was found to be a species of fruit eating bats i.e. Pteropus bat also known as flying fox. The major sources of infection amongst humans were raw date palm sap and pigs which were infected by fluids present inside Pteropus bats. The most affected were Asian countries but similar virus was also found in bats across African subcontinent. Nipah infection can be diagnosed in laboratory throughout the critical and rejuvenating stages of the infection by appointing various test combinations. NiV infections in humans and animals are diagnosed by various tests such as virus isolation, serological tests and nucleic acid amplification tests. Since Nipah is highly dangerous and potentially pathogenic contaminant, appropriate cautions have to be appointed while assorting, submitting and handling the sample. All the work related to Nipah has to be carried out in physical contaminant level. Till date no vaccine has been produced against Nipah virus due to limited experimental conditions, so certain measures could only be taken to prevent against Nipah virus, however the studies are in progress. A vaccine has been developed in Australia for protection of horses against the similar virus i.e. Hendra virus. The vaccine uses Hendra G protein and produces cross protective antibodies against HeV and NiV. Due to no licensed antibodies, only precautions can be taken to prevent infection by Nipah virus.