Ljungan Virus is quite "a thing" at the moment with a lot of research being carried out -not for wildlife health but human -that attracts the money.
With our necropsy study we found that babesia and leptospirosis were heavy hitters amongst foxes so it only makes sense that as foxes main prey are rodents such as rats, voles, etc I at least mention the topic (it has been noted in Red Foxes but sadly the UK is far from open when it comes to research papers -unlike the US or Europe.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljungan_virus
Ljungan virus was first discovered in the mid-1990s after being isolated from a bank vole near the Ljungan river in Medelpad county, Sweden.[2] It has since been established that Ljungan virus, which is also found in several places in Europe and America, causes serious illness in wild as well as laboratory animals.[3][4][5][6] Several scientific articles have recently reported findings indicating that Ljungan virus is associated with malformations, intrauterine fetal death, and sudden infant death syndrome in humans.[7][8][9][10] In addition, studies are being conducted worldwide to investigate the possible connection of the virus to diabetes, neurological and other illnesses in humans.[11][12]
Ljungan virus belongs to the genus Parechovirus of the family Picornaviridae. Other members of this viral family include poliovirus, Hepatitis A virus, and the viruses that cause the common cold (rhinovirus).[13] One of the earliest scientific discoveries regarding Ljungan virus was that infected wild rodents developed diabetes if they were exposed to stress.[14] This has led to speculation that this disease may be the underlying cause of fluctuating rodent populations in Scandinavia; when rodents increase to high densities, they find it difficult to defend territory and obtain food, and then become more susceptible to predation. This stressful situation results in disease, death and population decline, leading to a pattern of cyclic variation in population size over time.[4]
There was a 2014 paper (see abstract below)
Ljungan virus is endemic in rodents in the UK
"Ljungan virus is a recently identified member of the family Picornaviridae that was isolated from bank voles in Sweden. LjV has been associated with [corrected] type 1 diabetes-like symptoms and myocarditis in bank voles (Myodes glareolus), and it has been suggested that it has zoonotic potential.
"Here, we show for the first time that Ljungan virus is prevalent (20-27 % positive by PCR) in four species of UK rodent (Myodes glareolus [bank vole], Apodemus sylvaticus [wood mouse], Microtus agrestis [field vole] and Mus musculus [house mouse]).
"Sequence analysis showed that Ljungan virus of genotypes 1 and 2 were present, although genotype 1 was more prevalent and more frequently associated with brain tissue.
"This study highlights the prevalence of Ljungan virus in the UK and the need for assessment [corrected] of its zoonotic potential."
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