Epidemiology, Pathophysiology, Transmission, Genomic Structure, Treatment, and Future Perspectives of the Novel Marburg Virus Outbreak

Abstract

Marburg virus disease (MVD) has been linked to two fatal cases in Ghana’s Ashanti region. These cases were reported to the appropriate health authorities on June 28, 2022, as sus- pected cases of viral hemorrhagic fever, and on July 1, 2022, Marburg virus (MARV) testing was positive. This is the first time MVD has been made known in Ghana, and there has only ever been one earlier outbreak of the disease reported in West Africa. An MVD outbreak could pose a significant risk to the public’s health because it is severe and frequently fatal [1] . Three laboratories in West Germany and Yugoslavia reported epidemics of a previously unidentified disease in 1967 that was characterized by high temperature, hemorrhaging, and organ failure [2] . The culprit responsible for the disease was later determined to be a new virus known as MARV, the first described member of the Filoviridae family [3] . The first documented instance of the illness outside of a lab was in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1975. Cases of the illness were caused by MARV in 1980 and the Ravn virus, another MARV, in 1987 [4] . Recent outbreaks have been linked to higher pathogenicity and ~90% fatality in humans, com- pared to earlier outbreaks that were linked to 20–40% lethality [5]