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The implications of ‘reinfection’ in someone who has circulating antibodies are scary, and suggest that it might be harder than we think to create a viable vaccine. This is an ‘enveloped’ (membrane coated) virus, as HIV is enveloped, and unless a vaccine is against one of the proteins embedded in the envelope it might not be effective. Making it even more of a problem is that the major viral protein in the envelope is glycosylated (coated with sugar molecules) and this makes it harder to develop antibodies against.

Columbo also wrote: This could be a dumb question and is off-topic....would eating a zero carb diet help against glycosylated vidii?

I was actually thinking the same a few days ago. There is ample evidence that most cancer cells rely on glycolysis and a VLC diet has been shown to be beneficial in cancer reduction (Warburg) as far back as 87 years ago. I do not know and think it would be an interesting area of discussion to determine if interrupting glycolysis would impact the rapid replication of a glycosylated virus such as ebola.

There are so many avenues of research with this and I would wonder if being on a Ketogenic diet imparts some degree of protection from infection. I'm not sure how effective a VLC diet would be after infection because of the rapid replication of the Ebola virus.

Interesting comments. The Warburg effect is also very interesting, and cancer cells do have a very high rate of glycolysis, but this metabolic shift is now thought to occur because of the malignant state of these cells - and is not the cause of malignancy as Warburg originally postulated.

Even with a ketogenic diet you will still have glycosylation, because you can provide sugars via other biochemical pathways. That said, whether or not the rate of glycosylation would be affected is a very interesting question.

Ketogenic diets were touted back in the 1930s for treating urinary tract infections - I guess by lowering urine pH. Ebola uses the host cell ribosomes to make virus proteins, including those that are found in the envelope. I don't know if glycosylation of these proteins is required for replication, or is an adaptation of the virus to avoid immune clearance.

Thanks for the questions, both of you.