I think we’re gonna wind up with carriers.
bttt
Watch out for the bush meat.
Thanks for posting. Very, very interesting. Health/life BUMP!
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
Bring Out Your Dead
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
Link?
There you go. Academic admission that this strain is mutating and probably will continue to across its spread.
All infectious organisms mutate... well, I should be more clear. All organisms mutate, every time they reproduce. That process is called "evolution" and is a feature of life. So there is no "admission" here, merely a documentation of what we already know occurs. We expect viruses to mutate--even within a single patient during the course of a single infection, viruses have been documented to mutate.
A recombinant inbred strain (or recombinant inbred line) is an organism with chromosomes that incorporate an essentially permanent set of recombination events between chromosomes inherited from two or more inbred strains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombinant_inbred_strain
I wish to point out that because of the physical characteristics of the Ebola genome, recombination is highly unlikely to occur. For one thing, recombination takes place between homologous double stranded DNA molecules, but Ebola does not use DNA, not even as an intermediate. Influenza can recombine readily because each of its 8 genes are located on a separate piece of RNA genetic material, so influenza viruses just swap pieces with each other. However, Ebola has all of its 7 genes contained on the same strand of genetic material (RNA), so has no separate pieces to swap. [Note: I have said Ebola has 8 genes in previous posts. This was an error; it has 7.] Thus, even if two slightly different Ebola viruses infect a single host, they would not be able to trade genes the way influenza does. Therefore, the only way Ebola can take on new characteristics (such as the ability to spread through aerosols, the one that has everyone worried) is through mutation--a slower process than recombination.
The authors of the Science article were absolutely correct when they said that the longer this outbreak continues, the more likely it is to mutate to a more transmissible form.
Beside medical staff dying from Ebola, we now have investigative journalists!
Five Authors of Ebola Paper Published Today Have Died of Ebola
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/08/28/ebola_paper_authors_died_five_victims_contributed_to_research.html
Actually, the five who died were most likely the healthcare workers who cared for the patients and took the blood samples. They were not journalists. I doubt many journalists are allowed into patient care areas.
Why is that an "admission"? It's expected behavior.