Munich (dpa / lby) - After being infected with the rare Borna virus, a person died in the Upper Bavarian district of Mühldorf am Inn. This was announced by the district office and the state office for health (LGL) in Erlangen. They did not give any further details. According to the authorities, it is the third case of a Borna virus infection in the Mühldorf am Inn district since 2019, two of them in the Maitenbeth municipality. All three patients died, according to the LGL.
The disease is transmitted by field shrews and is known as an animal disease, but in recent years has also been identified as a cause of severe encephalitis in humans. In order to find out more about the Borna virus, the LGL and the University Hospital Regensburg recently started a study.
According to the LGL, seven cases of illness were reported nationwide in 2021, five of them in Bavaria. A spokesman said that the obligation to report human pathogenic Bornaviruses was only introduced in March 2020. Some of the previously known cases of infection, which were diagnosed retrospectively and sometimes date back many years and decades, were therefore not transmitted to the LGL.
According to the LGL, increased awareness of the topic of Bornavirus infections among doctors and the population in Bavaria means that more diagnostics and case finding - and thus an increase in the number of cases - can be expected in the future.
