Inside ‘the world’s deadliest cave’ that could cause the next pandemic: Kenya’s Kitum caused Ebola and ‘eye-bleeding’ Marburg virus

Kenya’s Kitum Cave, carved out by the tusks of elephants, who visit the caves to scrape the walls in search of salt, is home to some of the deadliest pathogens known to man.

In 1980, a French engineer from a nearby sugar factory contracted the body-melting Marburg virus while visiting Kitum Cave, located within the dormant volcano in the heart of Kenya’s Mount Elgon National Park. He died quickly in a hospital in Nairobi.

“The connective tissue in his face is dissolving and his face appears to be hanging from the underlying bone,” a book on the case described the man’s rapid decline from the viral hemorrhagic, or blood-inducing, fever, “as if the face were detaching from the skull.” ‘

Seven years later, Kitum Cave took another victim: a Danish schoolboy on vacation with his family. The boy died of a related hemorrhagic virus, now called the Ravn virus.

Scientists now realize that the cave’s prized salty minerals, which have made it a destination not only for elephants but also the buffalos, antelopes, leopards and hyenas of western Kenya, have turned Kitum into a breeding ground for zoonotic diseases.

In 1980, a French engineer from a nearby sugar factory contracted the body-melting Marburg virus when he visited the cave, which is located in the dormant volcano in the heart of Kenya’s Mount Elgon National Park. He died quickly in a hospital in Nairobi

When Kitum was first discovered, researchers didn’t know what to make of the scrapes and scratches along the walls. They reasoned that ancient Egyptian workers had excavated the site in search of gold or diamonds.

The realization that the 180-meter-deep cave was constantly being deepened and widened by elephants, only to become a refuge for disease-carrying bats, came later.

The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) launched an expedition to Kitum Cave after the incidents of the 1980s, wearing filtered pressurized Racal suits, but had difficulty identifying the species responsible the spread of the deadly pathogens to humans.

But more than a decade later, Marburg RNA was detected in an apparently healthy Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) was recovered from the cave in July 2007.

Reservoirs of the deadly virus were present in the liver, spleen and lung tissue of the pregnant female bat.

Scientists have since found vast amounts of protective ‘type 1 interferon genes’ in these Egyptian fruit bats, as well as so-called natural killer ‘NK’ cell receptors.

“People had previously looked at some bat genomes and couldn’t find any traditional NK cell receptors,” Boston University microbiologist Stephanie Pavlovich explains in the school’s internal publication. The edge.

“The bat can mitigate the virus for a short period of time, in an attempt to prevent the growth of the virus without launching a full-scale attack,” said Pavlovich’s fellow microbiologist Tom Kepler.

“There’s something very interesting going on here.”

When Kitum was first discovered, researchers didn’t know what to make of the scrapes and scratches along the walls

They theorized that ancient Egyptian workers had excavated the site in search of gold or diamonds

The realization that the 180-meter-deep cave was constantly being deepened and widened by elephants, only to become a refuge for disease-carrying bats came later.

Last year, teams from the United Nations World Health Organization were deployed throughout Africa and were working at full capacity to halt a new outbreak of Marburg, which has since been discovered in other caves across the continent.

Doctors in the US are also being warned to be on the lookout for imported cases, raising fears the virus may be spreading under the radar.

The Marburg virus is being touted as the next major pandemic threat, with the WHO describing it as ‘epidemic sensitive’.

It can jump to humans from fruit bats living in central Africa and can also be spread between people through contact with bodily fluids from an infected person.

People can also contract the disease by touching towels or surfaces that have also come into contact with an infected person.

The Marburg virus can incubate for two to 21 days in people it infects before causing symptoms.

But warning signs, when they do break out, initially resemble those of other tropical diseases such as Ebola and malaria.

Infected patients become ‘ghost-like’ and often develop sunken eyes and expressionless faces.

But in later stages, it causes bleeding from multiple orifices, including the nose, gums, eyes and vagina.

No vaccines or treatments have been approved for the virus, but doctors instead rely on medications to ease symptoms and fluids to hydrate patients.