What is the Marburg Virus Disease?

About Marburg Virus Disease:

• MVD, earlier known as Marburg hemorrhagic fever, is a rare but severe hemorrhagic fever that affects both people and non-human primates.
• Causative agent: MVD is caused by the Marburg virus, a genetically unique zoonotic (animal-borne) RNA virus. Marburg and Ebola viruses are both members of the Filoviridae family (filovirus).
• The virus takes its name from the German city of Marburg, where it was first identified in 1967 in a lab where workers had been in contact with infected green monkeys imported from Uganda.
• The reservoir host of the Marburg virus is the African fruit bat, Rousettus aegyptiacus.
• Transmission: The virus can be transmitted from bats to primates, including humans, and then spread through direct contact with blood or other body fluids from infected individuals.
• Symptoms:
  • Initial Marburg disease signs and symptoms include Fever, Chills, Headache, Muscle aches, Rash with both flat and raised bumps, often on the torso, Chest pain, Sore throat, Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea
  • As the disease advances, symptoms can become more severe, including liver failure, delirium, shock, bleeding (hemorrhaging), and multi-organ dysfunction.
• Fatality: The average MVD case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 24% to 88% in past outbreaks depending on virus strain and case management.
• Treatment:
  • There is no treatment or vaccine for Marburg disease.
  • Supportive therapy, such as intravenous fluids, electrolyte replacement, supplemental oxygen, as well as blood and blood products replacement, improves survival.

Q1: What is a Virus?

A virus is an infectious agent that can only replicate within a host organism. Viruses can infect a variety of living organisms, including bacteria, plants, and animals. Viruses are so small that a microscope is necessary to visualize them, and they have a very simple structure. When a virus particle is independent from its host, it consists of a viral genome, or genetic material, contained within a protein shell called a capsid.

Source: What is the highly-infectious Marburg viral disease that killed 6 in Rwanda?