Viruses and Koch's Postulates

Return of the Coronavirus: 2019-nCoV

“…Traditional identification of a microbe as the causative agent of disease requires fulfillment of Koch's postulates, modified by Rivers for viral diseases [37]. At the present time, the 2019-nCoV has been isolated from patients, detected by specific assays in patients, and cultured in host cells (one available sequence is identified as a passage isolate), starting to fulfill these criteria.…”

Metagenomics and the molecular identification of novel viruses

“…Henle-Koch postulates are a well known set of criteria that must be fulfilled by a microorganism for it to be proven as the cause of disease. The ability to culture viruses in vitro and the detection of antibodies against viruses led to new proposals for the demonstration of causality (Rivers, 1937). Advances in technology have resulted in new challenges to the assigning of causation and sequence-based approaches to virus identification have led to the formulation of guidelines defining the relationship between the presence of viral sequences and disease (Fredericks and Relman, 1996).…”

Reverse microbial etiology: A research field for predicting and preventing emerging infectious diseases caused by an unknown microorganism

“…When the microbial etiology of an outbreak caused by a new or unknown microorganism is considered definite, Koch's postulates must be satisfied. 5 Koch's postulates consist of the following requirements: 1) the organism must always be present in every case of the disease; 2) the organism must be isolated from a host containing the disease and grown in pure culture; 3) samples of the organism taken from pure culture must cause the same disease when inoculated into a healthy, susceptible animal in the laboratory; 4) the organism must be isolated from the inoculated animal and must be identified to be the same original organism first isolated from the original diseased host. 5 These principles have established the significance of laboratory culture of infectious agents.…”