Ученые из Нью-Мексико изучают вирус Син-Номбре на месте заражения жителя, ставшего первым жертвой инфекции в штате

TAOS — A team of University of New Mexico researchers dressed like spacefarers from an episode of Science Fiction Theater recently fanned out across three Taos County properties to advance their understanding of hantavirus, one of the world’s deadliest pathogens. Their primary quarry? The western deer mouse, the most common asymptomatic animal carrier of the Sin Nombre variant of the virus, which is endemic to more than a dozen small mammal species throughout the Four Corners. In August 2020, Taos County resident Mark Fratrick became the first and only person in New Mexico to catch Sin Nombre while he was cleaning out a shed and an old vehicle on his property in Ranchos de Taos. The disease hantavirus frequently causes in humans, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, nearly killed him over the weeks that followed. Fratrick was still inside UNM Hospital in Albuquerque when he agreed to grant UNM’s Center for Global Health Studies permission to conduct research at his property, where he believes he contracted the virus while completing prosaic household chores thousands of New Mexicans perform each year. “I was still in the hospital when they came in and asked me, ‘Hey, could we go to your property?’” Fratrick recalled. “And my brother actually went up there to Taos and hung out a couple days at my house so they could do the first study.” University researchers have returned to Fratrick’s two Taos County properties every August since, working under the supervision of Steven Bradfute, a viral immunologist at UNM who runs a lab specializing in the study of hantaviruses, alphaviruses, arenaviruses and filoviruses. Where it comes to hantavirus, the team’s goal is to keep tabs on the prevalence of Sin Nombre in New Mexico with the hope of better understanding how the virus spreads and advance treatments for humans, which they hope will one day include a vaccine. “We published a paper last year showing that the virus is widespread in wild-caught rodents throughout New Mexico,” Bradfute told the Journal. “It presents in rodents that we didn't expect, that were not known carriers. Live virus can also not just infect these animals, but it can be shed in their droppings for a whole bunch of different animal types.” UNM found that over 30 species of rodent and other small mammals endemic to the Southwest carry the virus, including ground squirrels, chipmunks, gophers, rats and house mice. Last month, Fratrick said the team harvested nearly 40 deer mice at his property in Ranchos de Taos, a rental unit he keeps in Valdez and a third property belonging to another Taos County resident. Fratrick said that’s significantly fewer mice than he can remember the team collecting in years past. “I want to say that before they’ve caught nearly double that between my two locations,” he said. Research shows that especially arid weather patterns, like New Mexico has seen now for two consecutive years, can diminish rodent populations by reducing food and water sources. A 2022 study by the Natural History Museum 0f London, for example, found that mice living in the humid climes of the Patagonian Andes thrived compared to mice living in more arid environments. In theory, the El Niño weather pattern forecasting greater precipitation for the Southwest starting this winter could cause rodent populations that carry Sin Nombre to rise, according to Bradfute. “Any type of weather pattern that can increase — for example, food and cover for rodents — can lead to more rodents,” he said, “so that leads to more rodents interacting with each other, so that can lead to more spread of viruses that these rodents might carry.” Sin Nombre transmits among rodent carriers, often when one rodent bites another, spreading the pathogen through its saliva. But unlike the Andes variant of hantavirus, which made headlines this spring after an outbreak aboard a Dutch cruise ship sailing the south Atlantic killed three people, there is no documented case of Sin Nombre spreading from person to person. “It’s just not documented, and it’s something that you would think we would have known by now,” Bradfute said. “But I never, you know, close the door on something like that with a definitive statement.” Scientists have been tracking and studying Sin Nombre since 1993, following the deadly Four Corners Outbreak, which caused 33 infections and 17 deaths. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome has a high fatality rate, killing between 20% to 40% of patients, “making it a disease of major public health concern,” according to the World Health Organization. UNM is part of a global effort to develop more effective treatments and a vaccine to make the virus less deadly among humans. “We've been testing some hantavirus vaccines in rodent models, and we are finding against Andes virus and against Sin Nombre virus, which is the virus that we have here in North America,” Bradfute said. “We are finding that some of these are generating good immune responses.” The International Conference of Hantaviruses will meet in November in Puerto Varas, Chile, which shares a border with Argentina, where researchers believe the Andes virus that infected the cruise ship passengers originated. Besides Taos County, UNM has conducted research in 16 other counties throughout New Mexico since 2019, with multiple studies each year. Next year, UNM will publish findings from the lab’s research over the last three years. “I think it's really important that we continue surveillance to find out where these viruses are,” Bradfute said. “Something that we are currently doing is we are looking at serum samples from people throughout the state to see whether or not they have been infected in the past with hantavirus to try to help us understand if we're underdiagnosing this virus.” John Miller is the Albuquerque Journal’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at [email protected]. hantavirus deer mice news university of new mexico taos county sin nombre virus