Ebola persists in survivors’ brains for years, re-emerging to spread & kill – study

RT – February 11, 2022

One of the deadliest infectious diseases on the planet, which is caused by Ebola virus (EBOV), may relapse, researchers have warned. A study, published on Wednesday and dubbed “groundbreaking” by the scientific community, has found that Ebola may be hiding in the brain of those thought to have recovered years ago following an antibody treatment.

Such persistent infections in survivors make them spread the virus again, “potentially causing a new outbreak,” according to researchers.

The study was conducted by a team at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). Having linked some recent Ebola outbreaks in Africa to persistent infection in patients who had previously survived the disease, researchers aimed to discover where exactly the virus could be sitting in the body, avoiding antibodies. To locate the hiding virus, they used a nonhuman primate model, which most closely recapitulates Ebola virus disease in humans.

They discovered “severe inflammation and massive Ebola virus infection” in the brains of about one in five macaque monkeys that had received monoclonal antibody (mAb) treatment. The virus persisted specifically in the brain ventricular system, in which cerebrospinal fluid is produced, circulated, and contained. Despite being cleared from all other organs with effective therapeutics, the virus was able to re-emerge to cause lethal disease, while also severely damaging brain tissues.

These findings have implications for long-term follow-up efforts to reduce the individual (disease relapse/recrudescence) and public health (reignition of outbreaks) consequences of viral persistence in survivors of EBOV infection,” the authors warned.

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Guinea’s neighbors ‘not ready’ for resurgent Ebola, says WHO, as risk of cross-border transmission ‘very high’ in West Africa

RT – March 5, 2021

The World Health Organization has warned that the deadly Ebola virus is highly likely to spread across West Africa, but said some of Guinea’s neighbors are not prepared for a new Ebola outbreak.

“There are six neighboring countries to Guinea, and we conducted an assessment of readiness. Two of the countries are not ready and one is borderline and there are three countries more or less ready,” WHO Regional Emergency Director Abdou Salam Gueye said on Friday, by video conference from Guinea.

Guinea, which is bordered by Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, has registered 18 cases of the virus, and four of those people have died, the WHO’s Guinea representative, Georges Alfred Ki-Zerbo, said.

Gueye noted that none of the neighboring countries were prepared to start inoculating against the virus, adding that, regardless, there aren’t enough jabs available to vaccinate preventively.

“But those neighboring countries agreed on cross-border cooperation and coordination to control the outbreak,” he said.

Ki-Zerbo said that 1,604 people had been given the Ebola vaccine in Guinea, which is experiencing the first major outbreak of the virus since 2013-16 epidemic.

The 2013-16 outbreak in West Africa was larger than all previous outbreaks combined, with 28,646 reported cases and 11,323 registered deaths. Ebola is a highly infectious and deadly disease that causes hemorrhagic fever and internal bleeding. The virus is spread through contact with infected body fluids.

Ebola has also seen a resurgence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a number of cases confirmed in early February and two deaths.

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