HONOLULU
The University of Hawaii has acquired several potential bioterrorism viruses, some of which cause encephalitis.
The viruses were brought in as part of a push by the university to specialize in infectious disease detection and drug discovery through research on avian flu, dengue fever, West Nile virus and SARS.
State records released to The Honolulu Advertiser show the encephalitis-causing viruses include Japanese B, Eastern equine and Venezuelan equine encephalitis. Eastern equine encephalitis is considered one of the most serious mosquito-borne diseases in the United States because of its high mortality rate.
Encephalitis is an enlargement of the brain that can cause neurological damage.
Researchers claim there’s little risk of public exposure to the viruses because access is tightly controlled, but at the same time they opposed their disclosure on the grounds that confidentiality was essential to security efforts.
“The risk is very minimal, primarily because we’re going to follow good laboratory practice here,” said Duane Gubler, director of Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases the university medical school. “I would like to say there’s almost no risk involved here because if there is a risk, then we shouldn’t even be operational.”
