PATH News Network Daily Edition

Pathologists Address Hantavirus Concerns

• College of American Pathologists

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Pathologists address hantavirus concerns. Plus, a hundred years of Pathology's Must Read Journal. We take a look back and ahead with its editor-in-chief. This is the Path News Network Daily Edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. It's Wednesday, May 13th. We shouldn't trivialize the deadly outbreak of the Hontavirus on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, but we also should not catastrophize it. That was a central message from a CAP media briefing Tuesday, where experts shared the latest information on the Andes strain of the virus that has been identified in nine of eleven confirmed cases. Dr. Bobby Pritt, Chair of the Division of Clinical Microbiology at Mayo Clinic, said that testing has been critical in understanding and controlling the outbreak.

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I want to emphasize the importance of laboratory testing, not just serologic testing, which is the detection of IgM and IgG antibodies, which is considered the gold standard method, but also our advanced techniques like PCR and next generation sequencing, which allowed us in this case to very quickly identify the cause of this outbreak. And that's the Andes virus or Andes strain, and also is allowing us to look at the strains from infected individuals so we can see that they are related.

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The experts emphasize that the Andes strain is not a risk to the general public and appears to require close and prolonged contact. It does not spread efficiently like COVID-19 or influenza. CAP Microbiology Committee member Dr. Mara Broadhurst of the University of Nebraska Medical Center noted an important difference in this outbreak compared to COVID. Hontavirus is endemic to South America and has been studied for decades. The Roaring Twenties may be known for prohibition and the jazz age, but the decade also marked major milestones for science, including the founding of the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in 1926. At its centennial, the journal is one of the most read in pathology and home to the CAP's guidelines and seminal findings. Dr. Alan Borzuk has served as the archives editor-in-chief since 2020. He says the journal has been looking back this year at influential papers. The January Special Edition brings home just how far the field has come.

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It's remarkable to look back in the 1920s and to see the concepts around endometriosis, for example, and to show what we know today, the theories they had back then, the ones that were correct, the ones that were not correct, and to update that in a modern times was the goal of our 100th anniversary series. And in that there are 10 papers that I would consider to be seminal papers that include diseases such as granulomatosis with polyangitis, mediastinal germ cell tumors, and others.

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Dr. Borzik says the journal continues to serve as both a resource for day-to-day practice and for information on innovation and technological advances in the field.

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The readership is looking to the journal for guidance on what things work and what things don't work, and what are optimizations, and they're looking to our subject matter experts who are our authors. Again, in the original article space and in the review article space, publications from CAP committees in this have also, in this topic, have also been published in the journal. And in a way, while they they are not guideline papers, readers are looking to this as a way of setting up their own laboratories and as at least guardrails on what they should be doing in practice.

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In 1995, the CAP assumed leadership of the archives, allowing the journal to remain free online. Sharing research at no charge, especially with low and middle-income countries, is a point of pride in an evolving information landscape, Dr. Borzak says. Idaho's first whole blood program is a partnership between Canyon County Paramedics, the St. Alphonsus Hospital System, and the American Red Cross. The team is now sharing its training and protocols with agencies across the state. And finally, so-called dark proteins have been implicated in diseases including childhood cancers. Some of them have a role in basic cellular functions, but most dark proteins are not well understood. Scientists have identified more than 1,700 types of them, but these small molecules that look and behave like proteins have never had a name until now. This month, the journal Nature reported that researchers have given dark proteins a name. Peptidines, a rebranding that will mark their inclusion in major gene and protein databases used by life sciences research. The rebranding is intended to increase research into the molecules' functions and may prompt the reclassification of some proteins as peptidines. That prompted one bioinformatician to call it a Pluto moment when astronomers reclassified dwarf planets orbiting the Sun. That does it for today's Daily Edition. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on today's stories. Got a story you'd like us to cover on the daily edition? Write to us at stories at cap.org. We're back at 5 a.m. Eastern for another episode of the Daily Edition. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. Have a great day.