Henipaviruses: An Ongoing Threat to Livestock and Humans

Dear Colleagues,

Hendra virus (HeV) was discovered almost 30 years ago and Nipah virus (NiV) some years later during outbreaks of deadly human diseases. Their natural hosts are bats, but these viruses can accidentally cross the species barrier and infect other mammals including humans, causing severe respiratory diseases and encephalitis, and often death in humans. The high capacity of adaptation of these viruses, combined with the ever-increasing interconnectivity of human populations and changes in climate and land use, generate pandemic threats.

HeV and NiV are non-segmented negative-sense RNA viruses that belong to the order Mononegavirales and the family Paramyxoviridae but for which the new genus, Henipavirus, was created in 2002. Today, this genus contains six established species, with distributions in Southeast Asia and Australia, together with a few uncharacterized African relatives.

The recent emergence of these viruses echoes that of other RNA viruses (Ebola virus, SARS-CoV, etc.), and has prompted a variety of responses, including the study of their replication mechanisms, the origin of their pathogenicity and the underlying drivers of their emergence, as well as the search for ways to prevent, treat and control animal and human infections.

For this Special Issue, we call for original research articles or reviews that address all the different aspects of henipavirus infections, ranging from structural to medical and ecological studies.

Prof. Dr. Marc Jamin
Prof. Dr. Viktor Volchkov
Guest Editors

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