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/
Unfortunately, the elites themselves may believe otherwise, and plan their actions based on incorrect assumptions.
If the "elites" were as smart as they think they are, they would already be shutting down travel from Africa, using various contrived excuses. My guess is that they are firmly convinced that nothing can ever happen to them.
Excuse me, but why did you post stuff copied from the CDC website? Why do you think I haven’t already read it, as well as dozens of the actual research articles there are on the subject?
That excerpt from the CDC says exactly what we have known all along—that Ebola can be spread through fomites and droplets, and that it is not aerosol. I’ve already said that in at least two posts in this thread alone.
If you have new knowledge—for instance, new research articles from scientific journals—that you think scientist and other interested FReepers may not have seen yet, by all means, post it. We’ve probably already seen what the CDC has to say, though.
We have no idea if that treatment was a factor in their survival. Two or three others given that same treatment died (I haven't kept up with the actual numbers). They may have survived because they were healthier than the average African who gets Ebola--many people have malaria or other parasitic diseases in that part of the world, which leaves them at a disadvantage when they get hit with something like Ebola. They may have survived because they were evacuated to the US, where the medical care is superior to any African medical care. We just don't know.
Also, those treatments have only been tested in animals. In monkeys, they only work if given within 1 or 2 days of exposure to virus--before the monkeys even get sick. There is NO experimental Ebola treatment that has cured a monkey once symptomatic disease sets in. Furthermore, the monkey studies are small--one study, for example, had a control and three study groups, each with 4 monkeys. That's only 16 monkeys in the entire study, which is way too small to make any sweeping conclusions about the drug's safety or efficacy, especially when extrapolated to humans.
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.
No vaccine works on someone who already has the disease. Some vaccines work if the person receives them a short time after exposure to the disease (that is why we can prevent people from getting rabies after they have been bitten by a rabid animal). As for testing treatments on Ebola patients--that is an ethical hotbed for a lot of reasons.
I should also point out that drugs, including vaccines, have to be tested for effectiveness on thousands of volunteers before the FDA will ever consider allowing them to be sold. There haven't been enough Ebola patients, ever, to be able to do that kind of testing.
You're much more trusting of the global elite than I am.
The "global elite" get their information from the same scientific community as everyone else. And those of us who are members of the scientific community know far more about health related subjects than any "elite" ever will.
In other words, if you are a healthcare worker caring for Ebola patients, you risk being infected. The rest of us don't have as much to worry about. Or we have nothing to worry about, since most of us aren't ever going to be anywhere near someone who has Ebola--certainly not within range of droplets or fomites.
Even if this is true, it is not a reason to be complacent.
There is no practical difference between aerosol transmission and droplet transmission if you are in a confined space with someone else who is sneezing or coughing. Just how sick is that airline passenger two rows behind you anyway?
Contact with contaminated surfaces is insidious and almost impossible to avoid. If a virus can survive for a few hours while encapsulated in a fomite or droplet, it can find a new host.
What saves people is that most viruses degrade rapidly when they are dried and exposed to sunlight and air. Also, virus have a fairly high failure rate to bind to host cells, so it take lot of them (several thousand virons) to get an infection started.
The new Ebola strains appear to have more effective binding mechanisms (they are more infectious), and survive longer in fomites or droplets. Patients may be shedding contagious levels of virus earlier in the course of their disease too.
The rules are changing.
For now that is true.
If the epidemic is confined to Africa and burns itself out, that will remain true.
Much depends on the definition of infected fomite. If those can include the handles of grocery carts and gasoline pumps, etc., with dried secretions of Ebola victims on them, the ultimate outcome still ranges from very bad to apocalyptic.
If they are sneezing and coughing, I suspect they have some kind of respiratory virus. Since Ebola is a bloodborne pathogen, I a) wouldn't expect an Ebola patient to be sneezing and coughing a lot, and b) wouldn't expect virus to be present unless they are expelling bloody fluids.
This paper (Bausch et al., J Infect Disease 2007; 196:S142–7) shows results of testing of various bodily fluids of acute and convalescent patients. Most of the samples did not contain virus.
Furthermore, the airflow in a plane minimizes the amount of air that is in contact with more than one passenger. I just read about that the other day. The air is sucked out from the bottom... that plane is almost like a laminar flow hood. So I do not have much concern about droplet transmission in the air on a plane... droplets on surfaces in the bathroom are another issue.
Contact with contaminated surfaces is insidious and almost impossible to avoid. If a virus can survive for a few hours while encapsulated in a fomite or droplet, it can find a new host.
The treatment facilities use bleach solutions to disinfect surfaces every day and as needed. Fomites become a problem when those infected with Ebola do not go to the hospital. People are avoiding the hospital--which could explain (at least in part) why this outbreak keeps on going.
What saves people is that most viruses degrade rapidly when they are dried and exposed to sunlight and air. Also, virus have a fairly high failure rate to bind to host cells, so it take lot of them (several thousand virons) to get an infection started.
In the case of Ebola, we do not know very well how durable the virus is, since the studies have not been done. However, Ebola is extremely infectious; the ID50, I seem to recall, is about 10 virions. Someone once told me that the LD50 is about half a virion, which I really do not understand, since there is a difficulty trying to obtain half a virion and it is questionable about how infectious half a virion can be.
The new Ebola strains appear to have more effective binding mechanisms (they are more infectious), and survive longer in fomites or droplets. Patients may be shedding contagious levels of virus earlier in the course of their disease too.
We are still dealing with Ebola Zaire, the same strain we have known for decades, although the clade is "new". This particular outbreak is less deadly than some past outbreaks. The reason it keeps spreading is probably related to human behavior, not virus characteristics.
#Ebola
"If the virus is that unstable, I am led to suspect it may have been artificially fabricated. (i.e. a man-made root virus formulated in the lab and let loose as a weapon or trial.)"
This is the key behavioral change to watch for.
Ebola virus is already known to be excreted in sweat, tears, vaginal fluids, and semen.
The question then is "how early in the course of the infection does contagious shedding start?". My guess is that it starts earlier in the course of the infection than it once did.
Also - "How long does the virus survive outside a host?". Again, my guess is that the answer is "longer than previous strains did".
These questions can be definitively answered by bioweapons researchers. They probably already know the answers. (Who do you suppose was already developing those experimental drugs to resist Ebola?)
In any event, the behavior of the epidemic will answer the questions.
What next?
Whatever.
And you just stated in response to Flamberge:
Contact with contaminated surfaces is insidious and almost impossible to avoid. If a virus can survive for a few hours while encapsulated in a fomite or droplet, it can find a new host."Fomites become a problem when those infected with Ebola do not go to the hospital. People are avoiding the hospital--which could explain (at least in part) why this outbreak keeps on going."
You just admitted that buildings can be contaminated by Ebola! People are at risk of contracting Ebola by entering Ebola-contaminated buildings, which can be grocery stores. I am an old Cold War civil defense guy and fully understand the implications of that.
The quarantine measures necessary to contain a significant Ebola outbreak in the U.S., absent widespread availability of an effective vaccine and/or treatment, will entail cessation of economic activity in the affected areas. This will have vast economic and financial effects. There will also be widespread panic which will have similar effects outside the affected areas.
This means likely economic and financial apocalypse countrywide should there be a significant Ebola outbreak in this country. Even in the absence of demographically significant fatalities.
That I understand too. Bill Quick has outlined a very possible scenario for such a financial apocalypse in the 2/3 of the U.S. not devastated by the fictional EMP pulse in his novel, _Lightning Fall_.
This has been my concern in an urban environment: Contaminated common contact surfaces, from door handles to handrails, shopping carts, park benches, ATM machines, any other surface multiple people are likely to contact in a relatively short period of time has tremendous potential to be a vector.
Also, see post #18.
Frankly, with the documented mutation rate in the virus at present (some 395 mutations), the concern is that the changes have been significant enough that testing for previously known forms of Ebola may not produce a positive result, even in an infected patient.
Vaccines are pretty specific when it comes to genetics. That's why the Flu virus vaccines cover different subtypes every year--trying to guess the ones which will be going around.
With the documented changes in the Ebola virus during the course of this outbreak (not counting future mutations), there is a solid chance that a vaccine for the older forms would not provide significant protection.
If anyone is counting on vaccines developed before the outbreak (should such exist), they may contract the disease and die anyway. At this point, there is no magic bullet.
And no, I don't trust the global elites, either, but ultimately, they are subject to the same laws of nature the rest of us are.
I didn't "admit" anything! I am trying to give the most accurate information I have, which is really difficult since there is so much we do not know about Ebola. We don't know how long it can survive on a surface, how long it can survive in air if artificially aerosolized (artificial, because it doesn't naturally aerosolize from human victims), how long it persists in certain bodily fluids after infection clears. We are hampered in learning these things because this virus is too danged dangerous for anyone who has not been properly trained to work with, and it takes months to learn how to work in a spacesuit.
We are extremely fortunate in that Ebola does not spread through aerosols. If it did, it would be worldwide pandemic by now. It does not spread easily. It will not become a pandemic. Thank God for that.
Thanks for the ping!
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
from the link/article written in French: “...le secteur de Djera, dans le Nord de l’Équateur...”
“Ecuador” also struck me as odd. My husband and I were discussing is there another Ecuador besides S.A. So, I followed the link and reached a similar conclusion as you.
THANK GOODNESS.
>>We are hampered in learning these things because this virus
>>is too danged dangerous for anyone who has not been
>>properly trained to work with, and it takes months to
>>learn how to work in a spacesuit.
No. This is incorrect.
You can train thousands of people in a few weeks to operate in such an environment.
The US Army Chemical Corps did that in 1991 and again in 2003 when US Army and US Marine units were trained to operate in the worst chemical environment — persistent nerve gas — for Operation Desert Storm and the 2nd Gulf War.
If we had the sense G-d gave a goose, The American Federal government would be training National Guard response teams to be trainers for Ebola PPE deployment to the medical community and stockpiling said material.
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