A new virus in Créteil? In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, French scientists have discovered a new virus called “Cristoli”, one of the symptoms of which is encephalitis, reveals the Public Assistance Hospitals of Paris (AP-HP).
After a high fever, a 58-year-old woman died of encephalitis in Paris, at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. Finding no explanation for his physical deterioration, the doctors called on virologists at Henri-Mondor hospital in Créteil, equipped with state-of-the-art technology, to analyze a biopsy of the patient’s brain and highlight this virus that has never been identified until then.
Cristoli, this name actually means: Créteil virus. It is part of a pre-existing virus family called “bunyavirus“, which has the particularity of being transmitted by mosquitoes, without triggering serious diseases. The Cristoli virus is classified in the category of neurological viruses.
What is metagenomics?
How was the virus discovered? Thanks to a method which consists of analyzing a human sample and identifying, via nucleic acid sequencing, pieces of known or unknown infectious agents. Or a bit of a blind exploration, looking for an intruder. This is called metagenomics, it is also through this that the Covid-19 virus was discovered.
Michel Pawlotsky, head of the medical biology pole at Mondor, specifies in Parisian this June 15, thatthis is not a new epidemic, but of an isolated case. In addition, the patient had a very fragile ground, she was immunocompromised and affected by a serious disease.
A number of unknowns persist. It is not known where the patient got it, or exactly how. It is very likely that she was infected in France. We do not know the incubation time of the disease, nor if it affects everyone the same way.
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