BATS have emerged as the most likely source of the deadly encephalitis which has swept through Malaysia, killing around 100 people. Antibodies to the virus responsible, which is called Nipah and is thought to have spread to people from pigs, have been found in two species of fruit bats.
Hume Field of the Queensland Department of Primary Industry's Animal Research Institute in Brisbane is testing more than 300 blood samples taken from bats throughout Malaysia (This Week, 24 April, p 12). In some populations, up to 25 per cent of them seem to have been exposed to the virus.
So far, however, the virus itself has not been isolated from bats, a crucial step necessary to confirm that the animals are the reservoir. But virologists at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are now searching for it in bat tissue samples.
A relative of the ...
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