How common are unexplained outbreaks of disease?
BBCHow common are unexplained outbreaks of disease? Alamy Outbreaks of the Sin Nombre hantavirus are now known to be linked to El Niño, which increases rainfall in the Southwestern US and boosts the rodent population Amid reports of a mysterious respiratory illness spreading among children in China, an expert explains how regularly unexplained outbreaks turn up. "There are clearly some outbreaks that are still mysteries," says Stephen Morse, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. "There are still a number of infections that go into that general category of undiagnosed acute respiratory distress and things like that which – like the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome – aren't recognised initially but then retrospectively get teased out," says Morse. "In many laboratories in high-income countries or high-resource settings, you can look at the samples and identify sequences that look like pathogen sequences, whether they're viral or bacterial… without necessarily knowing in advance what's in there," says Morse.
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