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January 13, 2000
New Virus Kills Pilot Whale
A newly identified virus caused the death of a pilot whale found stranded under the deck of a New
Jersey beach house.
ATLANTA—A new virus possibly linked to epidemics among marine mammals caused the death
of a pilot whale in New Jersey, according to an article in the upcoming issue of Emerging
Infectious Diseases, CDC's peer-reviewed journal, which tracks new and reemerging infectious
diseases worldwide.
In September 1997, a female long-finned pilot whale was found stranded under the deck of a New
Jersey beach house. She died shortly afterward, and an autopsy was performed. Many organs
were diseased, including the lungs, spleen, and liver. DNA studies of lung and brain tissues
showed a new virus, related to the morbilliviruses, which affect marine mammals.
Members of this family of viruses—the same family that causes measles in humans and rinderpest
in cattle—may have caused the deaths of more than half the in-shore population of bottlenose
dolphins along the Atlantic Coast of the United States in 1987-88, and of thousands of harbor
seals in northwestern Europe and striped dolphins in the western Mediterranean in 1988. Another
epidemic among bottlenose dolphins was discovered in the Gulf of Mexico in 1993-94, and the
infection has recently been reported in dolphins in the Pacific.
Scientists do not yet know the origin of these viruses or how they spread to marine mammals in
different parts of the world. New genetic identification techniques may help answer these
questions.
For more information, contact Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger at 202-782-7623 (fax), or by e-mail at
taubenbe@afip.osd.mil. Access the full article at
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol6no1/taubenberger.htm. All material in Emerging Infectious
Diseases is in the public domain and may be used without special permission; proper citation,
however, is appreciated.
For more information on this or related topics, see—
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