MERS-CoV spillover at the camel-human interface

  1. Gytis Dudas  Is a corresponding author
  2. Luiz Max Carvalho
  3. Andrew Rambaut
  4. Trevor Bedford
  1. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States
  2. University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Abstract

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a zoonotic virus from camels causing significant mortality and morbidity in humans in the Arabian Peninsula. The epidemiology of the virus remains poorly understood, and while case-based and seroepidemiological studies have been employed extensively throughout the epidemic, viral sequence data have not been utilised to their full potential. Here we use existing MERS-CoV sequence data to explore its phylodynamics in two of its known major hosts, humans and camels. We employ structured coalescent models to show that long-term MERS-CoV evolution occurs exclusively in camels, whereas humans act as a transient, and ultimately terminal host. By analysing the distribution of human outbreak cluster sizes and zoonotic introduction times we show that human outbreaks in the Arabian peninsula are driven by seasonally varying zoonotic transfer of viruses from camels. Without heretofore unseen evolution of host tropism, MERS-CoV is unlikely to become endemic in humans.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Gytis Dudas

    Vaccines and Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, United States
    For correspondence
    gdudas@fredhutch.org
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0227-4158
  2. Luiz Max Carvalho

    Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Andrew Rambaut

    Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Trevor Bedford

    Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4039-5794

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R35 GM119774-01)

  • Trevor Bedford

Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew Biomedical Scholar)

  • Trevor Bedford

European Commission (278433-PREDEMICS)

  • Andrew Rambaut

Wellcome (206298/Z/17/Z)

  • Andrew Rambaut

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Mahan Postdoctoral Fellowship)

  • Gytis Dudas

European Commission (725422-RESERVOIRDOCS)

  • Andrew Rambaut

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2018, Dudas et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Gytis Dudas
  2. Luiz Max Carvalho
  3. Andrew Rambaut
  4. Trevor Bedford
(2018)
MERS-CoV spillover at the camel-human interface
eLife 7:e31257.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31257

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.31257

Further reading

    1. Epidemiology and Global Health
    Yuan Zhang, Dan Tang ... Xing Zhao
    Research Article

    Background:

    Biological aging exhibits heterogeneity across multi-organ systems. However, it remains unclear how is lifestyle associated with overall and organ-specific aging and which factors contribute most in Southwest China.

    Methods:

    This study involved 8396 participants who completed two surveys from the China Multi-Ethnic Cohort (CMEC) study. The healthy lifestyle index (HLI) was developed using five lifestyle factors: smoking, alcohol, diet, exercise, and sleep. The comprehensive and organ-specific biological ages (BAs) were calculated using the Klemera–Doubal method based on longitudinal clinical laboratory measurements, and validation were conducted to select BA reflecting related diseases. Fixed effects model was used to examine the associations between HLI or its components and the acceleration of validated BAs. We further evaluated the relative contribution of lifestyle components to comprehension and organ systems BAs using quantile G-computation.

    Results:

    About two-thirds of participants changed HLI scores between surveys. After validation, three organ-specific BAs (the cardiopulmonary, metabolic, and liver BAs) were identified as reflective of specific diseases and included in further analyses with the comprehensive BA. The health alterations in HLI showed a protective association with the acceleration of all BAs, with a mean shift of –0.19 (95% CI −0.34, –0.03) in the comprehensive BA acceleration. Diet and smoking were the major contributors to overall negative associations of five lifestyle factors, with the comprehensive BA and metabolic BA accounting for 24% and 55% respectively.

    Conclusions:

    Healthy lifestyle changes were inversely related to comprehensive and organ-specific biological aging in Southwest China, with diet and smoking contributing most to comprehensive and metabolic BA separately. Our findings highlight the potential of lifestyle interventions to decelerate aging and identify intervention targets to limit organ-specific aging in less-developed regions.

    Funding:

    This work was primarily supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 82273740) and Sichuan Science and Technology Program (Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province, Grant No. 2024NSFSC0552). The CMEC study was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFC0907305, 2017YFC0907300). The sponsors had no role in the design, analysis, interpretation, or writing of this article.