Posted on 08/30/2014 8:04:13 AM PDT by alexmark1917
Rapidly Mutating Ebola Renders Diagnostic Tests Inaccurate - AKA: You May Have a New Strain of Ebola and Test Negative
An international team of scientists — some of whom succumbed to the virus during the course of their research — has sequenced 99 Ebola virus genomes from 78 patients in Sierra Leone, creating a valuable trove of genetic data for scientists and health care workers struggling to bring the growing outbreak under control.
...
"We were able to sequence and analyze our samples with about a 10-day turnaround. This is unprecedented, as earlier studies have usually taken many months with much smaller datasets," says Daniel J. Park, a co-author and computational biologist at the Broad Institute, in an email interview with Mashable.
The research, which used an advanced genetic analysis technique known as deep sequencing, reveals that the disease is rapidly accumulating mutations as it spreads.
The team found 395 genetic changes, including 341 that make this outbreak distinct from the viral genomes tied to previous Ebola outbreaks, and 50 that are unique to the West African outbreak more broadly.
Of particular interest are mutations that alter protein sequences, since they could potentially change the accuracy of diagnostic tests for the virus as well as vaccines and therapies.
It is unclear if these mutations are related to the severity of the current outbreak, but further genetic analysis could determine this.
http://mashable.com/2014/08/28/dna-ebola-virus-sierra-leone-entered-country-funeral-guinea-study/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link
For starters, the data show that the virus is rapidly accumulating new mutations as it spreads through people. "We've found over 250 mutations that are changing in real time as we're watching," Sabeti says.
While moving through the human population in West Africa, she says, the virus has been collecting mutations about twice as quickly as it did while circulating among animals in the past decade or so.
"The more time you give a virus to mutate and the more human-to-human transmission you see," she says, "the more opportunities you give it to fall upon some [mutation] that could make it more easily transmissible or more pathogenic."
Sabeti says she doesn't know if that's happening yet. But the rapid change in the virus' genome could weaken the tools researchers have to detect Ebola or, potentially, to treat patients.
Diagnostic tests, experimental vaccines and drugs for Ebola — like the one recently used to treat two American patients — are all based on the gene sequences of the virus, Sabeti says. "If the virus is mutating away from the known sequence, that could be important to how these things work."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/28/343734184/ebola-is-rapidly-mutating-as-it-spreads-across-west-africa?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=science
Five of the researchers who helped decode the Ebola virus genome have died in the current outbreak. http://t.co/JsZxglO2rE
— Karen Kaplan (@LATkarenkaplan) August 28, 2014
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FDA-Approved Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators Inhibit Ebola Virus Infection
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/190/190ra79.full.pdf
CDC Director Frieden: Risk is Increasing Tom Frieden's Ebola Assessment: The Risk Is Increasing
...Frieden says there's now a vicious cycle around Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia, which is amplifying the spread of the disease. "More cases are leading to less adequate management of each case, which is leading to more cases," he says. "That cycle has got to be broken for us to stop this."
The best hope lies in a new $489 million plan proposed by the World Health Organization, with the goal of stopping Ebola transmission within nine months. The ambitious plan would deploy hundreds of international experts and thousands of local medical staff. But first, Frieden stresses, the money has to be raised.
Meanwhile, the bad news is mounting. "The number of cases is spiraling upward," he says. "There's an urgent need to get patients into isolation and start to get better control of the disease."
"This is a threat not just to West Africa and to Africa, this is a threat to the world," Frieden says, emphasizing the need to fund WHO's effort. Every day the outbreak continues "increases the risk of spread to other countries."
West African health departments don't have the staff, training or equipment to control this disease on their own, Frieden says. That means the international community must pick up the pace of its response to the crisis.
"Literally every day that we don't make more progress controlling the outbreak," Frieden says, "is another day that the outbreak will not just continue — but grow much larger."
http://kuow.org/post/tom-friedens-ebola-assessment-risk-increasing?utm_referrer=http://m.kuow.org/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F#mobile/40830
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Diseased_Ebola_2014.png/360px-Diseased_Ebola_2014.png
New Strain in DR Congo:
The Health Minister Felix Kabange, announced Thursday, Aug. 28 that seven new cases of Ebola have been confirmed by laboratory tests. Bringing to thirteen the number of people affected by the virus in the area Djera people in northern Ecuador, where the epidemic was declared.
http://radiookapi.net/actualite/2014/08/29/rdc-7-nouveaux-cas-debola-djera/
US Expecting THOUSANDS Of College Students From West AfricaTo Attend School in US...."MAY" BE SUBJECT TO HEALTH CHECKS
College students from West Africa may be subject to extra health checks when they arrive to study in the United States as administrators try to insulate their campuses from the worst Ebola outbreak in history.
With the virus continuing to kill in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, the expected arrival of thousands of students from those countries has U.S. authorities on alert but cautioning against alarm.
"I can see why there would be concern; there's no vaccine for it," said Fatima Nor, an 18-year-old freshman at the University at Buffalo, where about 25 students from Nigeria are enrolled for fall. But she said knowing that the virus is transmitted strictly through direct contact with bodily fluids of sick people, and not by sitting next to someone in class, should be enough to calm nerves.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/08/29/us-colleges-screen-some-students-for-ebola/
CDC Changes Criteria for Ebola Transmission; admits "being within 3 feet" or "in same room" can cause infection
THIS WEEK the CDC changed their information about how Ebola can spread; they now admit "being within 3 feet" of an infected person or "being in the same room" with an infected person can allow the virus to infect someone else! They also admit a person who is infected, but not yet showing symptoms, is contagious!
http://preventebola.com/public/index.php/news/54-cdc-changes-criteria-for-ebola-transmission-admits-being-within-3-feet-or-in-same-room-can-cause-infection
video: http://investmentwatchblog.com/rapidly-mutating-ebola-renders-diagnostic-tests-inaccurate-aka-you-may-have-a-new-strain-of-ebola-and-test-negative/
The statements about being within 3 feet or prolonged exposure being a risk factor refer to fomite and droplet transmission. Fomites are surfaces that are contaminated with infectious material, which is a danger to anyone who touches the surfaces. Droplets can travel a short distance before they fall to the ground, so someone near a patient can be exposed if the patient vomits, has diarrhea, or spurts blood. Many people confuse droplet and aerosol transmission, but they are NOT the same. Aerosols are generated from the upper respiratory tract; Ebola patients are not known to generate aerosols. Aerosols can travel several yards, putting people downwind at risk.
You will not get Ebola simply from being in the same room or an airplane with a symptomatic patient. You actually have to come in contact with a contaminated surface or droplet.
No kidding. That’s a pretty significant change.
But by being near someone in the same room or on an airplane, you can catch Ebola from them, no actual bodily contact is required—and that’s a big change from what has been reported and claimed, including by our government. Just imagine riding on the subway with someone who is contagious but not yet symptomatic.
Regardless, it looks like there will be no vaccine since ebola is constantly mutating.
No. What has been reported and has not changed is that you need contact with infected bodily fluids. That means that someone can vomit or otherwise discharge fluids in a room, and droplets from those fluids splashing on surfaces can make those surfaces infectious. That is called "fomite transmission" and is documented in the case of Ebola. However, you cannot catch Ebola through aerosols, meaning that the air that an Ebola patient has breathed is not infectious. There is no evidence otherwise.
Also, a person who has Ebola is not contagious until symptoms appear.
If Ebola were like influenza, which can spread through aerosols and is contagious before symptoms appear, it would already be sweeping around the world in a terrible pandemic unlike any ever seen before. It would be orders of magnitude worse than the Black Death or the 1918 pandemic. Ebola does NOT spread easily, and that is why we are all able to sit at our computers and discuss it, instead of having to occupy ourselves by dying or burying the dead.
Agree with everything you said. People shouldn’t go to finance bloggers for bleeding edge (p) medical information.
I agree, something isn’t right about this. Ebola has been around a long time. It usually burns out fast.
Someone is up to population reduction.
I am not certain about mutations rendering the tests ineffective. The recent Science paper indicated that the mutations are mostly conserved, meaning that genetic changes did not result in protein changes. So, a protein based assay will still work. Especially if the assay used is based on an antibody mixture (for instance, purified from serum of an infected animal or patient), in which case the likelihood of every single antibody in the mix losing its ability to detect viral proteins because they mutated is almost nil.
The genetic changes can make a PCR (genetic based) assay ineffective. But if the PCR assay is redundant (as it should be)—that is, it detects more than one part of the virus genome—then the more likely result is that a sample will have mixed positive and negative results. Other tests will be done to confirm the presence of Ebola.
In the case of Ebola, I believe that many patient samples are tested for other diseases common to the area, as well. Malaria and other hemorrhagic fevers are common in west Africa. A positive result for another disease decreases the likelihood that a case of Ebola is being missed. If the person tests negative for everything, then Ebola remains suspect.
It is not unusual for a virus to mutate during the course of an outbreak—in fact, it is normal and expected. Very often, virus isolated from a patient late in infection is different than that isolated early in infection.
Absolutely. And they shouldn’t come to medical people like me for investment advice. ;)
Comment sounds exactly like the uneducated and superstitious Africans, who believe that WHO is bringing Ebola to their villages to kill them.
Did you read the article that is the subject to this thread?
I think by the time the CDC changes its specifications to include just what I said, it’s time to rethink what you think you know about the disease.
What else makes any sense? Wouldn't it be ironic if these recent adaptations of Ebola made any experimental treatment useless?
Rainbow Six
Of course I did. And everything it said that does not corroborate what I know of Ebola, I checked, either at the CDC website, or in research journal articles. I will *never* post without being absolutely sure of the facts.
I think by the time the CDC changes its specifications to include just what I said, it’s time to rethink what you think you know about the disease.
The CDC updated its website just 2 days ago, and will continue to update it as new scientific information comes in. That means, as new information from researchers is published, and not as new opinions from some financial blogger are posted on the internet.
In that whole article, the only line that is really concerning is this: "The more time you give a virus to mutate and the more human-to-human transmission you see," she says, "the more opportunities you give it to fall upon some [mutation] that could make it more easily transmissible or more pathogenic."
That has not happened yet, but you can be certain that the CDC, WHO, and all of those other letter health agencies all over the world are highly concerned about it. If Ebola were to become contagious by aerosols, there would be no stopping it. Look at influenza--it is transmissible by aerosol, and we have never managed to stop influenza transmission. And it kills more people per month than Ebola has ever killed.
There is not, and might never be, some "designer vaccine" to protect the "elites" from Ebola. In order for there to be a vaccine or cure, it must be tested for effectiveness in thousands of human volunteers. I don't see thousands of people interested in being dosed with live Ebola virus to test a vaccine or cure, do you?
Here ya go, from the CDC web site:
“Low1 risk exposures
A low risk exposure includes any of the following
Household contact with an EVD patient
Other close contact with EVD patients in health care facilities or community settings. Close contact is defined as being within approximately 3 feet (1 meter) of an EVD patient or within the patient’s room or care area for a prolonged period of time (e.g., health care personnel, household members) while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment (i.e., standard, droplet, and contact precautions; see Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations)having direct brief contact (e.g., shaking hands) with an EVD patient while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment.
Brief interactions, such as walking by a person or moving through a hospital, do not constitute close contact”
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/case-definition.html
Two medical professionals were given a treatment and survived. There must have been some testing before it was given to them. Wasn't that a "designer vaccine" that protected them? It wasn't given to their patients in western Africa.
I would think people who have a 90% or so chance of dying would be willing to try an experimental vaccine. It happens all the time, that people sign up for clinical trials for diseases they probably wouldn't otherwise survive.
You're much more trusting of the global elite than I am.
See this thread.
That is extremely easy to do.
Spend any amount of time in close proximity to a patient with diarrhea or vomiting, and you will come into contact with a contaminated surface. Infection control procedures reduce - but do not eliminate - exposure.
Caregivers stay healthy because most diseases are not extremely contagious, and because the caregiver has some partial immunity or resistance to the diseases.
With novel diseases, such as Ebola, all that goes away. The rules have shifted under everyone's feet.
Which will never happen. Because the affected countries will cry racism
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