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A recent study suggests that camels may be the reason behind one MERS virus death.

This idea first came about after the death of a 44-year-old camel owner from Saudi Arabia in November last year.

The man died of the MERS virus (or the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus), and a number of subsequent tests revealed that both he and the camel from his own herd had the virus. It was the camel who had the disease first, and it was then transferred to the man after he put medicine in the camel's runny nose.

According to the researchers from King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia, they took samples from both the man and the sickly camel and found out that they have genetically the same virus.

According to the study, the agent that was most likely responsible for transferring the virus from camel to man would be the animal's nasal secretions. More researchers are leaning to this discovery and are trying to get more evidence to strengthen this proof.

The study was published online on Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said: "Earlier work had different pieces of the puzzle that made this story likely. But in this small episode, all the pieces came together."

Ian Jones, professor of virology at Britain's University of Reading told reporters: "This is a further strengthening of the case for camels being an immediate source of human MERS infection."

One of the first cases of the MERS virus happened in June 2012, when a 60 year old Saudi male resident died with severe pneumonia and kidney failure in Jeddah. After this, it spread globally and even reached Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States.

This virus is the same family as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed over 8,000 people worldwide after it first appeared in China in 2002.