Indian Journal of Comparative Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases
  • Year: 2014
  • Volume: 35
  • Issue: 2

Bats and their resistance to deadly viruses - a review

1National Institute of Virology, University of Pune, India

2Division of Medical Virology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Department of Veterinary Microbiology, Western College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, University of Sydney, Australia

*Corresponding Author: Email: banerjee.arinjay@usask.ca

Online published on 23 January, 2015.

Abstract

Bats are the only mammals capable of flight and play an important role in the ecosystem. Bats have been the source of several deadly viruses such as Ebola, Henipavirus and SARS, which have caused lethal infections in other mammals. Besides rabies, none of the other viruses seem to produce any symptoms in bats. This has led to numerous investigations on the bat immune system. Understanding the immune response produced by bats to suppress the replication of these viruses could be helpful in extrapolating the knowledge to human immune responses to these viruses. It could also help in designing drugs and therapies to control the viral infection in humans. This review intends to put together the current researches that are being carried out in the field of bat immunology along with ideas and comments brought about.

Keywords

Bats, innate immunity, adaptive immunity