Fletcher Gnanadurai John, Christopher Solomon, Gnanamony Manu
Department of Clinical Virology, Christian Medical College, Vellore 632004, Tamil Nadu, India.
Med Hypotheses. 2009 Aug;73(2):133-7. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2009.02.029. Epub 2009 Apr 17.
Size and shape are the two immutable laws that govern all life forms including viruses. In this study we postulate and evaluate the hypothesis that there exists a strong association between viral geometry and features of viral disease outbreaks. Data on viral disease outbreaks were retrieved from WHO and CDC public domains for a period of twelve years to assess the relationship between viral size and epidemiological factors such as number of outbreaks, case fatality rate, proportion of emerging infectious diseases and transmission routes. We observed a significant correlation between viral size and frequency of disease outbreaks (rho=-0.82, p=0.004), case fatality rate (rho=0.48, p=0.03) and genome size (r=0.79, p<0.001). Viral sizes were significantly different among diverse transmission routes (p<0.001). The proportion of emerging infectious diseases were significantly different between viruses with size <10(5) and >or=10(5)nm(3) (21% vs 64%, p=0.046). In conclusion, this preliminary evidence shows that viral size plays a substantial role in the epidemiology of viral diseases. Our data suggests that small size viruses are associated with more number of outbreaks than large size viruses. Large size viruses are associated with high case fatality rate and can be potential emerging pathogens. Viral size may be crucial for niche selection and specified transmission routes in the susceptible host. Hence, viral geometry should not be neglected in epidemiology and modeling of viral diseases, and planning vaccine strategies.
大小和形状是支配包括病毒在内的所有生命形式的两个不变法则。在本研究中，我们提出并评估这样一个假说：病毒几何形状与病毒疾病暴发特征之间存在强关联。从世界卫生组织（WHO）和美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）的公共领域检索了为期十二年的病毒疾病暴发数据，以评估病毒大小与诸如暴发次数、病死率、新发传染病比例和传播途径等流行病学因素之间的关系。我们观察到病毒大小与疾病暴发频率（rho = -0.82，p = 0.004）、病死率（rho = 0.48，p = 0.03）和基因组大小（r = 0.79，p < 0.001）之间存在显著相关性。不同传播途径之间的病毒大小存在显著差异（p < 0.001）。大小<10(5)和≥10(5)nm(3)的病毒之间，新发传染病的比例存在显著差异（21%对64%，p = 0.046）。总之，这一初步证据表明病毒大小在病毒疾病流行病学中发挥着重要作用。我们的数据表明，小尺寸病毒比大尺寸病毒与更多的暴发次数相关。大尺寸病毒与高病死率相关，并且可能是潜在的新发病原体。病毒大小对于易感宿主中的生态位选择和特定传播途径可能至关重要。因此，在病毒疾病的流行病学和建模以及疫苗策略规划中，不应忽视病毒几何形状。
