Replies

Doug,

What concerns me most is that we might begin to see an infection pattern with Ebola that is now well documented in Marburg outbreaks.

1. We know that human infection with Ebola comes about through the intermediary of infected great ape carcasses.

2. The viral transmission to primates occurs in the dry season, a period when food resources become increasingly scarce. The great apes then come into competition with bat species for fruit supplies when foraging and can be infected notably by blood or by placental fluid that escapes when bats give birth. (See my post #57 from 2004)

3. The mode of contamination by Marburg virus appears to be different, however. It does not appear to need any intermediary to be pathogenic for humans, as foreseen from the data on Marburg epidemic outbreaks.

In one outbreak, which raged in the north-east of DRC in 2000, most people infected worked in a goldmine, which turned out to be the refuge for a large colony of Egyptian rousettes. During the second epidemic, in Angola, the first victims were children who had gathered fruit from trees where a large population of this species of fruit bat roosted.

4. R. aegyptiacus - Carries both antibodies and viral RNA fragments - strongly suggesting that this bat species is a non-symptom developing carrier of the Marburg virus - (i.e.) the natural reservoir.

If Ebola were to recombine in a way that gave it any of the infection abilities of its cousin Marburg - well.....

Not as far fetched as once it seemed.