The Hantavirus Outbreak: 20 Years Later

On Friday, May 14, 1993, a young Native American from near the Four Corners region of New Mexico had just been admitted into the emergency room at Gallup Indian Medical Center. His chest X-rays showed a white-out in his lungs, which had filled with fluid.

Dr. Bruce Tempest, chief of medicine at the hospital and a commissioned officer with the U.S. Public Health Service (Indian Health Service), studied the film and tried to ascertain why this strong, otherwise healthy individual lay in shock so close to death. Little did he know that as he looked for answers, he’d find himself at the beginning of a mysterious epidemic soon to become a household name around the world: hantavirus.

As headlines blared fears of a new disease that might even be an escaped bio-weapon, scientists at universities and public health organizations raced the clock to learn more about the virus and from where it came. Robert Baker, a Horn Professor of Biology at Texas Tech University, had a feeling some answers may lie in the tissue library of the Natural Science Research Laboratory (NSRL) at the museum of Texas Tech.

That was 20 years ago before myriad pieces of an intricate puzzle gave us a clear view of how the disease suddenly leaped onto the scene. Tissue samples from Texas Tech showed the virus was not new to the area. The Four Corners region adapted to the “new” threat that really was there all along. And people like Robert Bradley, a professor of biology and curator of mammalogy at the NSRL, use the skills, knowledge and technological advancements that came during and after hantavirus to see what else might be brewing in our own back yards.

Read more below.

 

Texas Tech Research Plays Key Role in Identifying Disease