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Merged So Ebola's back......

Is the fact that the deadly strains are in 3rd world countries, but the harmless strains are where medical care is better, pertinent?

And I wonder if the harmless types act as vaccines for the deadlier ones?
 
casebro said:
Is the fact that the deadly strains are in 3rd world countries, but the harmless strains are where medical care is better, pertinent?

And I wonder if the harmless types act as vaccines for the deadlier ones?
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No and no.

Of course outbreaks, epidemics and fatality rates are going to be influenced by the lack of public health infrastructure.

But if I read your questions right, you are wondering if with better health care we have immunity to ebola, no. The reason we have detected the harmless to human Reston virus is because we were looking. The Reston virus was imported here in a famous incident that could have been disastrous.

Discovery ...
While investigating on an outbreak of Simian hemorrhagic fever (SHFV) in November 1989, an electron microscopist from USAMRIID named Thomas W. Geisbert discovered filoviruses similar in appearance to Ebola virus in tissue samples taken from Crab-eating Macaque imported from the Philippines to Hazleton Laboratories in Reston, Virginia. The filovirus was further isolated by Dr. Peter B. Jahrling, and over the period of three months over a third of the monkeys died—at a rate of two or three a day.[10]
Blood samples were taken from 178 animal handlers during the incident.[11] Of them, six eventually seroconverted, testing positive using ELISA. They remained, however, asymptomatic. In January 1990, an animal handler at Hazelton cut himself while performing a necropsy on the liver of an infected Cynomolgus. Under the direction of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the animal handler was placed under surveillance for the duration of the incubation period. When the animal handler failed to become ill, it was concluded that the virus had a low pathogenicity in humans.[12]
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But is the infected patient now immune to the more hazardous types? I'm thinking the way cow pox inferred immunity to small pox, thus inspiring the whole vaccine concept.
 
casebro said:
But is the infected patient now immune to the more hazardous types? I'm thinking the way cow pox inferred immunity to small pox, thus inspiring the whole vaccine concept.
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No. And if an attenuated strain provided protection it could be used as a vaccine.

For your premise to make sense antibodies to Reston would have to be widespread.

But it's more than that. For some infections like Dengue, the first strain that infects you is usually mild but it sets up a response to the antigen of the second strain. Having antibodies to one actually triggers the hemorrhagic disease with the next strain. I.e. a vaccine could cause disease rather than prevent it.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
No....
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You say that as if you know it as a fact, that it has already been looked at. Then you go on to talk of generalities, and other diseases.

Are there antibody tests available, to try on the fluids from the infected researcher?

If there are, also of interest would be to test the healthy at-risk population for survivors that have had the disease. Let's get a real picture of the rates.
 
casebro said:
You say that as if you know it as a fact, that it has already been looked at. Then you go on to talk of generalities, and other diseases.

Are there antibody tests available, to try on the fluids from the infected researcher?

If there are, also of interest would be to test the healthy at-risk population for survivors that have had the disease. Let's get a real picture of the rates.
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I am speaking from specific knowledge. Occupational infectious disease is my area of practice. Ebola, Marburg, Lassa Fever, and SARS are some of the most hazardous infections for the health care workers that take care of infected patients.

There are ebola antibody prevalence studies like this one.

One past issue of The Feb 1999 Journal of Infectious Diseases has a number of reports you might be interested in.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Whoops, meant to edit, hit reply instead.

The Reston virus was named for the famous dodged bullet outbreak in a primate center in Reston Virginia. It's been the subject of intense study since.

https://web.stanford.edu/group/virus/filo/ebor.html

"The Hot Zone" was written about the outbreak.
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Dodged bullet is right... That was practically a list of how NOT to handle an outbreak.
No quarantine of infected workers, allowed to go home.
Meeting with USAMRIID at a rest stop to hand over monkey corpses.

And the current Ebola outbreak is up to 888 cases and 539 fatalities. WHO release.
 
I Ratant said:
I wish the news reports didn't have to mention the witch-doctor aspect
where the disease is said to be caused by witches!
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It´s something in the culture in that region, I suspect.

A friend and former co-worker of mine, who was born in Nigeria but now lives here in Germany, is organizing a scholarship program to finance a school education (first through sixth grade) for girls in his home region. When he travelled there to see how things were going, he found that several girls´ parents had refused the funding on advice of their pastors, who told them that the money was going to be used as a focus for voodoo rituals against the girls.

I don´t have enough faces, or palms, to facepalm as much as I want to when I hear that.
 
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Seems the death rate of treated cases runs about 70%?

Can we assume there are milder cases, who don't get treatment, with a very low death rate? So the overall death rate may be comparable to the flu (s) ?

As with all the other 'news worthy epidemics' with extremely high death rates, (bird flu, swine flu....) I can't help but wonder what the REAL death rate is. That is why I asked up-thread if there is an appropriate antibody test that would show lots of survivors in the general population.
 
Serological surveys were undertaken to find evidence of prior Ebola virus disease in the area and asymptomatic infections occurring during the epidemic.

The collection of serum samples has resulted in all sorts of rumors within the populations tested. Trust is not a given.
In December 1976 and January 1977, sera were sought from as many people as possible. A total of 236 serum samples were obtained. Three persons, two of them in clinically non-infected households, who had not had symptoms during or since the epidemic, were found to have Ebola virus IFA titres of at least 1:64. All three had experienced contact with fatal cases. Extrapolating to the entire population two more silent infections might be expected. Thus it appeared that 29 people (7%) in the village had been infected, clinical illness ensued in 83% with an infection mortality rate of 76%.
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I'm sure you could find other prevalence studies. After all there have been extensive searches for the animal reservoir. That kind of search involves testing humans as well.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Serological surveys were undertaken to find evidence of prior Ebola virus disease in the area and asymptomatic infections occurring during the epidemic.

The collection of serum samples has resulted in all sorts of rumors within the populations tested. Trust is not a given.


I'm sure you could find other prevalence studies. After all there have been extensive searches for the animal reservoir. That kind of search involves testing humans as well.
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Your link was to an outbreak 40 years ago.

But of interest, most cases were caught from other people, with syringe re-use the rest. I had thought it was mostly bat-> people? Or is that something that has changed in the ensuing 40 years?
 
casebro said:
Your link was to an outbreak 40 years ago.
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So? You think the epidemiology has changed in 40 years?

I posted the first hit I got on a serology survey. If you want something more recent or with a larger sample size, look it up yourself. :rolleyes:

Asymptomatic ebola is not a common event.

casebro said:
But of interest, most cases were caught from other people, with syringe re-use the rest. I had thought it was mostly bat-> people? Or is that something that has changed in the ensuing 40 years?
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Yes, IT'S A BLOODBORNE PATHOGEN, hellooo. It's always been a bloodborne pathogen.

One of the reasons it spreads besides contaminated medical equipment, which is a serious problem in third world countries, is because it is the culture in the area to prepare the deceased for burial and family members were getting exposed to their recently bleeding dead relatives.

I'm not quite sure what your concerns are but if you're worried it's going to spread around the world, it isn't. At least not ebola. A new strain of related virus could emerge, but ebola is nothing for Westerners to worry about.

Lassa Fever, OTOH.....
 
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