You May Have a New Strain of Ebola and Test Negative

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

FDA-Approved Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators Inhibit Ebola Virus Infection

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

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.

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/

With all the mutations going on, no one can say with 100 percent certainty what is safe. Your statement is true for the known strains, except maybe the Reston strain, which hasn’t caused symptoms/death in humans so far as I know.

The recent Science publication found fewer than 400 mutations, and more than half of them were conservative, meaning that they changed the genetic sequence without changing the protein sequence. This is out of a genome that is around 19,000 bases. So it really has not changed very much at all.

The Reston strain has been documented to cause asymptomatic disease in humans--15 people were demonstrated to have seropositivity, evidence of past infection. It is still treated as a BSL-4 agent, since there is still the possibility that it causes disease in humans as severe as other strains of Ebola do.

A drop of Sarin or VX on exposed skin is far more immediately lethal than a drop of snot with 10 viral particles of Ebola.

So, let me see. I said that ten molecules of sarin will not kill you, while ten viral particles are deadly. According to the CDC, approximately 1 to 10 ml of sarin on the skin is lethal. So, going by the low end of that range, with sarin having a molecular weight of 140.90 g, specific density at 25C of ~1.1 gram/cm3, I find that a lethal dose of sarin is roughly around 4.7 x 10^21 molecules. Hmm, that looks like many orders of magnitude less lethal than Ebola to me. But what do I know, I'm only a PhD level scientist with experience in the field of toxicology.

As my day job included the production of equipment for the M17 lightweight decontamination system, I can tell your complete ignorance of what the Chemical Casualty Care Division, US Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md teaches its medics regards giving care in a mission-oriented protective posture - 4 (MOPP-4) gear in an immediately lethal contaminated environment.

Working with biologic organisms is not even comparable to working with chemicals. Biological organisms replicate and have a way of getting into places where you would never suspect. Chemicals simply do not behave in that fashion. The amount of sarin vapor that could enter through a pin-prick in a MOPP suit is infinitesimal, especially considering that the suit itself is engineered to bind chemicals before they get near the skin. But a pin-prick in a BSL-4 suit can easily allow a lethal dose of virus access to the skin.

I am not kidding or making things up when I say that researchers have to be trained for months to work in BSL-4 conditions. That happens to be the legal requirement, and it is the requirement for a reason. I seriously doubt anyone with an IQ of 90 is capable of this type of training.

One more thing about the difference between chemical and biological agents. We have treatments for most chemical agents. There is no treatment for BSL-4 categorized biological agents.

I am sure that is true(you are very knowledgable) but we don’t know zip about what it’s doing today, or will do tommorrow with 100% certainty.

I think a lot of people would just like to know that someone is preparing for the worst, and not just dismissing it out of hand, or just hoping for the best.

Continually reassuring people that there’s nothing to worry about, just makes them more concerned and afraid. That has been my experience. You may have a totally different perspective, and that’s fine too.

Eeeee-bolllll-aaaaaa ping!

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...

>>”Everyone knows the story of how the closely related cowpox virus protects against smallpox.

There may be a natural member of the Ebola family that does the same thing. 13 people have been infected with Ebola Reston and seroconverted. None of them got sick. So there is a reasonable chance that Reston is a natural vaccine to Ebolas Zaire.

Bit drastic to infect a large population on purpose with a virus, but that’s what we did with cowpox.”<<

Saw this posted elsewhere and was wondering what those skate than I think of this.

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