Posted on 10/18/2014 1:22:30 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As Ebola spreads out of control in West Africa, the World Health Organization reports a black market in blood from Ebola survivors. The epidemic is killing up to 70 percent of those who get sick, but the thousands who have survived have blood teeming with antibodies that protect them against infection again.
Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly has donated serum to three other patients — fellow medical missionary Dr. Rick Sacra, NBC camera operator Ashoka Mukpo and Dallas nurse Nina Pham. No one knows if it’s helped, but in theory Brantly’s antibodies should have kick-started their immune responses.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
Because there’s no specific cure for Ebola, people are asking why not make blood available. Researchers in Texas say there may be an unexpected source: people with silent Ebola immunity.
“There is limited evidence from past outbreaks that suggests there probably are quite a few people who get exposed, who get infected, without ever developing symptoms and without ever developing illness but they develop immunity,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at The University of Texas at Austin....
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
“The Journal of Immunology had an article that showed there was some enhanced immunity against Ebola with those that have been vaccinated against rabies. The challenges were only in primates, no human subjects have been tested....yet.”
You may be either misremembering the article, or laboring under a misconception. I’m familiar with research published last year on experimental bivalent vaccines in primates, but that’s not a “rabies vaccine”, it’s a modified rabies virus designed to express cell-surface antigens of the ebola virus.
Regular vaccination against rabies, to the best of my knowledge and journal searching capability, provides no protection against ebola. The misconception arises from the fact that researchers are trying to create an effective ebola vaccine by modifying rabies viruses to express ebola virus glycoproteins.
Link if you’re interested: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667758/
were you trying to respond to post #10 ?
I got bit by a large rattler in 1968, took the antivenom shots and came out of it pretty good other than being allergic to the antivenom. I have been hit three more times since and other than severe swelling in the bite area I have no tissue damage and didn’t take the antivenom the last three times.
No. I responded to post #10 in my post #13.
LOL OMG so it may actually BE a racist disease.
And Obama is doing everything he can to bring it to America.
LOL LOL LOL OMG OOOO LOL
LOL
“Oh, goodie. The whole family but for the youngest had the rabies series fifteen years ago, and my oldest daughter just had the complete series again.
So she’s the one we’ll send out to forage. :) I guess the dog can go too.”
Where do you live? in bat cave?
You mean he’s putting Beyonce and Jay Z in danger? HOW COULD HE DO THAT!!!
If they're white, then it's racist!
/sarc
It is likely that the about 5-10% of Americans that are effectively immune to both black plague and HIV are also immune to Ebola. If one of their parents had the immunity factor, called CCR5 delta 32, they will get sick but recover; and if both parents have it, they won’t get sick.
It works by preventing cell adhesion by the virus. If a virus cannot stick to a cell and penetrate it to reproduce, then it and millions of its clones break out of the dead cell to spread, it dies.
The percentage of CCR5 delta 32 in different ethnic populations:
European Descent: 16%
African Americans: 2%
Ashkenazi Jew: 13%
Middle Eastern: 2-6%
Other peoples have little or no trace of the mutation.
Read the article and check out the hypertext links:
Meet The Children Who Are Resistant To Contracting Ebola, HIV-AIDS
http://addiandcassi.com/meet-children-resistant-contracting-hivaids-ebola/
Excerpt:
Because my twins’ NPC cholesterol genes are non functional, scientists have learned their cells are resistant to contracting Ebola and HIV-AIDS (and probably a host of other viruses that use the NPC gene pathway to infect humans). Read the research announcement here. They actually want to “give” NPC disease for short period of time if someone gets Ebola — turn the gene off temporarily so the virus can’t replicate, then turn it back on.
You can understand more about the implications and importance of the NPC gene if you also read the Department of Defense Ebola and NPC announcement.
Weren’t the two nurses in Dallas Vietnamese and black?
I’ve no idea. But the vast majority of people have no immunity.
My error is in interpretation/extrapolation that if the person has been vaccinated against rabies and the vaccine contained an immunogen of the shared glycoprotein that the rabies vaccinate may have some immunity against ebola. Am I incorrect in that interpretation? Thanks.
“The rabies was used to stimulate the immunological response to rabies...is what I understood.”
Let’s try this track. The research discusses a specially created rabies virus that has been genetically modified by researchers. It has been engineered specifically to contain ebola-like characteristics.
Trying to work with a sample of real ebola virus is incredibly difficult.
By modifying an existing virus, one that is far easier to handle and work with in large quantities, one for which we have proven methods and procedures for producing a vaccine, you can hopefully avoid the nearly insurmountable difficulties involved in trying to work with hundreds or thousands of pounds of live ebola virus cultures in a large lab facility. You can avoid the need to have your hordes of labworkers (and facility staff as well) trained in and using level IV biosafety procedures (only III for rabies if I recall). In addition, you can (again hopefully) avoid many of the potentially embarrassing pitfalls involved with injecting test subjects with attenuated, dead, or cell-surface samples of ebola.
“The Journal of Immunology had an article that showed there was some enhanced immunity against Ebola with those that have been vaccinated against rabies.”
Just a point of clarification regarding the language used there: Rabies virus, and rabies vaccines, offer no immunity whatsoever to ebola. It’s just that a small group of researchers have started trying to genetically engineer rabies viruses to act enough like ebola that they can, hopefully, use the franken-virus to safely create a vaccine that provides some level of immune system response to actual ebola. As an added benefit, a vaccine produced from the genetically modified rabies virus might provide immunity against rabies as well — a twofer.
I take 80 proof precaution every chance I get!
If some people exposed to Duncan can develop immunity without getting sick, more power to them!
PING!
Bat in house while we were sleeping fifteen years ago, daughter attacked by raccoon this summer.
Turns out rabies vaccine is not helpful for Ebola.
I would like to live in the Bat Cave.
Or Bat Cave NC. Either one.
My brother is a veterinarian and I seem to remember years ago, a conversation about vets were given a rabies vaccine. Is that true?
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