Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever Associated with

multiple genetic lineages during 1999 outbreak

Background Results Conclusions

•Marburg Hemmorrhagic Fever was first discovered
in 1967 Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade,
Yugoslavia (now Serbia). The 31 infected individuals acquired the

•Marburg Hemmorrhagic Fever is caused by the

filovirus called Marburg virus. The RNA filovirus
family also includes Ebola virus.
•Symptoms include: fever, generalized body pains,
nausea and vomiting, headache, anorexia, malaise,
abdominal pain, diarrhea, dyspnea, dys- phagia,
hiccups, conjunctivitis, rash or petechiae, and
abnormal bleeding from the nose, mouth, or QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

gastrointestinal tract.
•The average mortality rate is 23=25% although in
some outbreaks the mortality has been as high as
83%.
•In 1998-2000 there was an outbreak in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo.
•The disease appeared to initially infect the miners
and the disease then spread to the caretakers of
the miners.

Methods Conclusions
•Nine distinct lineages of virus were found
•The outbreak was located in Durba, DMC
and is about 150km from the Uganda •The viruses source was in the mine where there
Sudan border. were bats, rats and poor sanitary conditions.
•During the Outbreak, the area was held •The nine lineages imply that there were short
by Ugandan Soldiers and Congolese chains of human to human transmission instead of
rebels who then began to illegally mine. one initial cases and cases branching from that
individual.
•Due to the ongoing civil war, World
Health Officials were unable to make it to •The closing of the mine lead to the cessastion of
the area until after the majority of the the outbreak, further supporting the case that the
cases had occurred. disease is harbored in caves
•The officials used hospital records to
reconstruct the cases that occurred before
the arrived.
•Biochemical identification was done
using multiple techniques as shown by
Table 1.

Reference
Bausch, Daniel G. "Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever Associated with Multiple Genetic
Lineages of Virus." new england journal of medicine. 355.9 (2006): 909-919. Print.