As the world is now painfully aware, pigs can act as reservoirs for viruses that have the potential to jump into humans, triggering mass epidemics. Influenza is one such virus, but a group of Texan scientists have found another example in domestic Philippine pigs, and its one that's simultaneously more and less worrying - ebola.
There are five species of ebolaviruses and among them, only one - the so-called Reston ebolavirus - doesn't cause disease in humans. By fortuitous coincidence, this is also the species that Roger Barrette and colleagues have found among Philippine pigs and even among a few pig farmers.
The team were called in last July by the Philippine Department of Agriculture to identify a mystery illness that was sweeping across the country's pigs, infecting their lungs and airways and causing miscarriages. Barrette's group collected tissue samples from five groups of pigs throughout the island and through ...
