Review reveals how tissue pathology clarifies disease mechanisms and causality in emerging East Asian tick-borne viral infections, highlighting the necessity of a One Health approach.
Key Points
To synthesize pathological, virological, and clinical evidence on emerging tick-borne viral infections in East Asia and highlight the role of tissue-based pathology in confirming viral causality.
Reviewed clinical, virological, and histopathological findings from human cases and animal models (including cats and ferrets) across East Asia, with a primary focus on Japan.
Assessed tissue-based pathological strategies, specifically in situ localization of viral antigens and genomes, to establish cellular tropism and definitive etiological links to organ damage.
Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus targets plasmablast-lineage B cells, driving severe immune dysregulation, hypercytokinemia (cytokine storm), and hemophagocytic syndrome.
Histopathological analysis of fatal Oz virus infection confirmed direct viral localization in cardiomyocytes, establishing a distinct causal mechanism for fulminant myocarditis.
Tissue-based pathology and a collaborative One Health framework uniting human and veterinary pathology are critical to resolve diagnostic causality gaps left by genomic detection methods.