Marburg virus is a hemorrhagic fever virus of the Filoviridae family of viruses and a member of the species Marburg marburgvirus, genus Marburgvirus. Marburg virus causes Marburg virus disease in primates, a form of viral hemorrhagic fever. The virus is considered to be extremely dangerous.
Why is it Called Marburg?
The virus was named after the city of Marburg, where most of the more than 30 cases in the 1967 epidemic were documented. RAVV was discovered in 1987, in a 15-year-old Danish boy who suffered from viral hemorrhagic fever in Kenya; the strain was named for the patient.
Marburgvirus was the first genus of Filoviridae to be described, and hence its members are prototypical filoviruses. Virion particles are cylindrical and filamentous, with occasional branching or rod-, ring-, or U-shaped forms. The virion is roughly 80 nm in diameter, and its length averages 790 nm but is highly variable.
A helical nucleocapsid houses a negative-strand RNA genome, about 19 kilobases in length.