Researchers develop experimental treatment for deadly Nipah virus

Researchers are a step closer to developing a treatment for the deadly Nipah virus, a disease transmitted by fruit bats that has a high mortality rate. The disease is most common in Asia and South Asia. Nipah virus causes fever, headache, drowsiness, mental confusion, and left untreated, it can progress to coma. It has a 90 percent mortality rate. Although rare, it occasionally causes outbreaks among hundreds of people in Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh and India through contact with the bodily fluids of infected fruit bats, including their urine. The highly infectious virus is in the same class as Ebola, Marburg, and Hendra viruses. Currently, there’s a serious Ebola outbreak in three countries in western Africa. Researchers who work with Nipah must wear protective suits, gloves and face masks. Once infected, an individual can spread the illness to other people. Now, a team of U.S. university and government researchers has discovered an antibody in uninfected...