Bat‐borne viruses in Africa: a critical review

Abstract

In Africa, bat-borne zoonoses emerged in the past few decades resulting in large outbreaks or just sporadic spillovers. In addition, hundreds of more viruses are described without any information on zoonotic potential. We discuss important characteristics of bats including bat biology, evolution, distribution and ecology that not only make them unique among most mammals but also contribute to their potential as viral reservoirs. The detection of a virus in bats does not imply that spillover will occur and several biological, ecological and anthropogenic factors play a role in such an event. We summarize and critically analyse the current knowledge on African bats as reservoirs for corona-, filo-, paramyxo-and lyssaviruses. We highlight that important information on epidemiology, bat biology and ecology is often not available to make informed decisions on zoonotic spillover potential. Even if knowledge gaps exist, it is still important to recognize the role of bats in zoonotic disease outbreaks and implement mitigation strategies to prevent exposure to infectious agents including working safely with bats. Equally important is the crucial role of bats in various ecosystem services. This necessitates a multidisciplinary One Health approach to close knowledge gaps and ensure the development of responsible mitigation strategies to not only minimize risk of infection but also ensure conservation of the species.

Conserving Africa’s wildlife and wildlands through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond

“…The COVID-19 pandemic, like the SARS-CoV 1 and Ebola epidemics, likely originated from human consumption of wild animals. Live wildlife markets create opportunities for pathogens to infect naïve domestic species or humans and trigger new diseases 41,42 . In Africa, particularly in the tropical forest biome, bushmeat markets expose human populations to species identified as high risk for pathogen spillover, such as primates, bats and rodents 43 .…”

Experimental Lagos bat virus infection in straw-colored fruit bats: A suitable model for bat rabies in a natural reservoir species

“…Singular spill-over events of lyssaviruses other than RABV from bats to terrestrial mammals also have been reported [14][15][16][17][18][19]. Despite increasing recognition of their importance, relatively little is known about the dynamics of lyssavirus infections in their natural hosts, bats [13,20,21]. Based on the recurrent finding of high seroprevalences in some freeranging bat populations (Table 3.2 in [22]), a number of researchers have hypothesized that bats, in contrast to other mammals, can survive a productive lyssavirus infection, i.e an infection where lyssavirus reaches the brain and is subsequently excreted from the oral cavity [23].…”

“…Based on the recurrent finding of high seroprevalences in some freeranging bat populations (Table 3.2 in [22]), a number of researchers have hypothesized that bats, in contrast to other mammals, can survive a productive lyssavirus infection, i.e an infection where lyssavirus reaches the brain and is subsequently excreted from the oral cavity [23]. In contradiction, there is no indication from experimental infections in bats that this occurs and bats seem, like other species, unable to survive infection of the brain, which appears to always result in fatal rabies [21,48]. Experimental infections in bats have been performed mainly with four lyssaviruses: RABV, Australian bat lyssavirus, and European bat lyssaviruses 1 and 2 [49].…”

Coronaviruses in humans and animals: the role of bats in viral evolution

“…This epidemiological role was again confirmed in 1994 via their role in the spread of Hendra virus among horses and Nipah, SARS, and filoviruses (Marburg, Ebola, and Mengla virus) among humans (Peiris et al 2004;Johnson et al 2010;Li et al 2005). Bat examination revealed the presence of viruses from most of the known viral families, including Rhabdoviruses, paramyxoviruses, filoviruses, and coronaviruses without showing any clinical signs (Wang and Cowled 2015;Markotter et al 2020). The simultaneous presence of various viral genomes in bats enables the permanent evolution of new unknown viruses in bats (Woo et al 2012).…”

“…About 75% of the human emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin and are mainly associated with wild animals (Markotter et al 2020). The last few days of the year 2019 showed the emergence of a new epidemic of coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome -2; SARS-CoV2).…”