A virus belonging to the same family as the deadly Ebola and Marburg viruses has been found in Europe. This is the first time that a member of the filovirus family has been found to occur naturally outside Africa or the Philippines.

Gustavo Palacios, now at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Maryland, and his team examined bat corpses in two caves in Spain where large die-offs had occurred. They noticed signs of viral infection and discovered filovirus RNA sequences in extracts from the liver, lungs and other organs.

It is unclear whether this virus, which the researchers named the Lloviu virus, killed the bats. In Africa, bats carry filoviruses but do not exhibit symptoms. However, the authors did not find the Lloviu virus in healthy bats in the caves or surrounding region.

PLoS Pathog. 7, e1002304 (2011)