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The Origins of Marburg and More
Dear reader,
In the summer of 1967, while the the student movement in West Germany was gaining momentum, dozens of laboratory workers in Marburg and Frankfurt became infected with a previously unknown virus. The patients displayed symptoms of a never before seen hemorrhagic fever. Some of them died within days of becoming ill.
Most patients had contacted in one way or another with African green monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops) shipped from Uganda. Whether because they had personally performed necropsies on the monkey, or had worked with organs and cell cultures obtained from them, twenty-five out of thirty patients were directly infected from the source.
This was also true a few days latter when two more cases were reported miles away in Belgrade, Serbia (former Yugoslavia). Ironically, the scientist involved were all researching poliomyelitis vaccines, and needed the monkeys to obtain kidney tissues for cell cultures.
Within three months, this new virus had been isolated, characterized and named after the city of Marburg. This was the first Marburg Virus Disease outbreak in history and it killed seven people.
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