At least 38 people, most of them children and teenagers, have died since early June 2024 in the of Chandipura virus in India in over 20 years.
Author
Manal Mohammed
Senior Lecturer, Medical Microbiology, University of Westminster
This rod-shaped pathogen is a member of the rabies virus family that causes – inflammation and swelling in the brain. And it is mainly by sandflies, but mosquitoes and ticks can also spread it.
The initial symptoms are similar to the flu, but they can rapidly advance (over 24 to 48 hours) to encephalitis, coma and death. Children under the age of 15 are the most vulnerable.
Exactly how the virus enters the central nervous system and causes encephalitis is poorly understood. It has been proposed that when an infected insect bites a person to get their blood meal, they secrete their saliva containing the virus.
The virus then spreads into the person’s bloodstream and called monocytes (a type of white blood cell), where it replicates, undetected by the immune system. The virus then gets transported to the central nervous system and enters the brain by disrupting the protective blood-brain barrier.
Six hours after the person has become infected, the Chandipura virus secretes a protein called phosphoprotein inside brain cells, and this might explain why .
Unfortunately, there are no antiviral drugs to treat people infected with the Chandipura virus. And there is no vaccine.
Fairly recent problem, driven by climate change
The Chandipura virus is named after the village in Maharashtra, India, where it was first identified in 1965. But the first big outbreak didn’t occur until 2003 in Andhra Pradesh (a state in the south of India) where tested positive for the virus with 183 of them dying. And in 2005, an outbreak in Gujarat, (a state in the north-west) was reported with 26 cases and a high .
The latest outbreak, affecting over in Gujarat, had a particularly heavy toll on children under 15. The rapid spread of the virus and the severity of symptoms has concerned .
Since the virus was first discovered in India in 1965, most of the cases have been restricted to the Indian subcontinent. However, the geographical distribution of the virus extends beyond India. It was detected in sandflies in , and in (1990-96). Antibodies to the Chandipura virus have also been found in in Sri Lanka in 1993.
The emergence of Chandipura virus in India is probably related to climate change and its spread is .
Several diseases spread by bugs have as a result of climate change. For example, this summer, India reported a high number of cases of mosquito-borne viruses, , and .
Manal Mohammed does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
