September 30, 2012 – DISEASE - A piece of genetic detective work by an international team has uncovered a deadly virus not seen before that likely caused a small isolated outbreak of acute hemorrhagic fever in central Africa in the summer of 2009. The outbreak, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), killed two people and left one person seriously ill. The researchers have given the deadly pathogen the name Bas-Congo virus (BASV), after the province where the three people lived. They report their work in the 27 September issue of the online open access journal PLoS Pathogens. The 2009 outbreak of acute hemorrhagic fever started when a 15-year-old boy from a village called Mangala in the DCR suddenly got ill and started bleeding from the nose and gums and vomiting blood. He got worse very quickly and died three days later. A week later, a 13-year-old girl who went to the same school as the boy, started with the same symptoms, which also worsened rapidly, and she also died within thre...