No measurable adverse effects of Lassa, Morogoro and Gairo arenaviruses on their rodent reservoir host in natural conditions.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In order to optimize net transmission success, parasites are hypothesized to evolve towards causing minimal damage to their reservoir host while obtaining high shedding rates. For many parasite species however this paradigm has not been tested, and conflicting results have been found regarding the effect of arenaviruses on their rodent host species. The rodent Mastomys natalensis is the natural reservoir host of several arenaviruses, including Lassa virus that is known to cause Lassa haemorrhagic fever in humans. Here, we examined the effect of three arenaviruses (Gairo, Morogoro and Lassa virus) on four parameters of wild-caught Mastomys natalensis: body mass, head-body length, sexual maturity and fertility. After correcting for the effect of age, we compared these para

SUBMITTER: Marien J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5408478 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature