Filoviruses such as Ebola and Marburg are a perennial source of anxiety for zoonotic transfer. The human populations generally thought to be at risk of filovirus exposure are in sub-Saharan Africa. However, in 2002, the Lloviu filovirus was first identified from a mass die-off of Schreiber's bats (Miniopterus schreibersii) in northern Spain. Kemenesi et al. report the isolation and sequencing of Lloviu filovirus from bats in Hungary. During 2016-2020, surveillance found Lloviu virus in dead and live cave-dwelling bats and in their blood-engorged ectoparasites. Antibody testing detected nine seropositive bats out of 74 live bats and overall on-site RT-PCR detected four positives among 351 live bats sampled. Although Lloviu virus can infect several human cell lines, unlike Ebola virus, recombinant Lloviu virus does not initiate immune signaling in macrophages and may be nonpatho-genic to humans, like the Ebola virus relative Reston filovirus. -CA Nat. Commun. 13.1706 (2022).
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