A team of Bolivian health authorities, U.S. Navy health experts based in Lima, Peru, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has characterized “Chapare arenavirus,” a previously unrecognized arenavirus, discovered in serum samples from a patient in rural Bolivia who eventually died of the infection. A full report of the study is published April 18th in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens.

More than 100 people have died in the central Democratic Republic of Congo, in what health officials suspect is an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever.

A topical respiratory tract vaccine tested for the first time in a primate model may protect against Ebola virus infection. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD and the Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA report their findings in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of Virology.