Editor’s note: Discover the latest COVID-19 news and instructions at Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center.
A new preliminary genetic study suggests that the typical Ebola revolution in Guinea may have originated with a survivor of the 2014-2016 West African Ebola revolution, rather than from an animal outbreak. to a person.
According to the pre-release report, the uprising apparently started with the survivor introducing a sex partner with the deadly virus through semen – after the virus have been lying in the person for at least 5 years.
The analysis, posted online Friday, was conducted by scientists from Guinea, the Institut Pasteur in Senegal, the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the University of Edinburgh, and the company PraesensBio.
According to the Infectious Diseases Association of America (IDSA), the longest survivor of Ebola virus is believed to have been around 500 days old.
The previous Ebola uprising resulted in a total of 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, according to the new report. To date, normal behavior in Guinea has led to 18 cases and nine deaths, according to The New York Times.
The news is “sobering,” said William Schaffner, MD, an infectious disease epidemiologist and pandemic preparation specialist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in an interview with Medscape Medical News.
“Who would have thought that the Ebola virus could stay hidden in a man – a male – for five years and then put off another revolution?” Schaffner said. “Until this news came in, I think we all thought that this latest Ebola revolution was the result of an introduction from an animal species, possibly a fruit bat, that -into the human population. “
“This brings a whole new sense of public health to the idea that Ebola survivors have been a reservoir of this disease for many years,” he said.
Schaffner explained that the testes, as well as the eye and the central nervous system, are among the three immune-mediated places in the body where the Ebola virus is hidden.
Extensive vaccine?
The new report raises the question, he said, about whether some of the events that took place in Africa were not brought in from the desert but did occur because a survivor killed the disease in a new companion.
The particular danger is that the virus lies dormant in the testes, rather than in the eye or in the CNS, that it could be transmitted to a sexual person, Schaffner noted.
The findings in the genetic analysis could add to the stigma for the survivors, he said.
It also raises the question of the need for widespread vaccines in equatorial Africa. Furthermore, even though Ebola vaccines are very effective, he said, it is not known how long they could protect people.
“It would be really hard to do,” Schaffner said. “You would vaccinate millions of people.” Another public health measure may encourage more condom use, he noted, which comes with its own set of problems.
As a result of this latest news, surviving men will move into the research scene, he said, and volunteers will be asked to provide semen samples to determine if it is a one-time event. this or something that happens in common.
The location of the immune defense areas in the body also makes it difficult to study, beyond asking for semen samples, Schaffner said.
The information in the report is convincing, he said, since he concluded that when comparing the virus in the conventional carrier and the virus in West Africa 5 years ago, it was almost conclusive. the viruses were identical.
“That provided conclusive evidence from the laboratory that this could not be a virus imported from the desert,” Schaffner said, “because by this time, viruses in the desert have accumulated many, many other mutations. . “
Angela Rasmussen, MD, a pathologist at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security in Washington, DC, noted Twitter sin, “[W]viruses that have been repeating for 5-7 years would be expected to have many more mutations, even at low levels. Like the hundreds. They have 12.. “
This is also genuinely shocking to me scientifically.
Based on the known mutation rate of EBOV/Makona, we'd expect viruses that have been replicating for 5-7 years, even at low levels, to have many more mutations. Like hundreds. These have 12.https://t.co/mePO21OQkQ
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) March 12, 2021
Michael Ryan, MD, head of emergency at the World Health Organization (WHO), said at a preparatory meeting Friday that the WHO has sent more than 30,000 doses of vaccine to the country.
Schaffner has not disclosed any material financial relationships.
Marcia Frellick is a freelance journalist based in Chicago. She has previously written for the Chicago Tribune, Science News and Nurse.com and was an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the St. Louis. Cloud (Minnesota) Times. Follow her on Twitter at @mfrellick
For more news, follow Medscape on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.