Hantaviral infections of rodents: possible scenarios

Excerpt

Virus–host interactions vary widely, depending on the host species and the virus, and depend on age, dose and route of exposure in determining whether the outcome will be a chronic host infection with viral nucleic acid (genome) in target organs such as brain, lung, liver or kidney, whether infectious virus will be excreted over time, and what the route of excretion will be. In regard to viruses principally transmitted among rodents, dominant transmission routes may be affected by any or all of these or other variables in different rodent behavioral settings. Whereas characteristics of intraspecific aggressive behavior among weaned adults are thought to dominate mechanisms of reservoir infection with hantaviruses [1, 2], there are many ways in which virus could spread among such communal rodents. …