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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 20 2017, @03:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-wasn't-sleeping dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

After the ghastly symptoms subside, Ebola may not be done; it may just shift to a clever stealth mode, a new study suggests.

Examining archived tissue samples from infected monkeys, researchers found that Ebola can create a cryptic viral reservoir in certain immune cells and hide in corners of the body where the rest of the immune system has little reach. The study, published this week in Nature Microbiology, echoes the reports from human Ebola survivors who complain of lingering symptoms and complications that researchers have struggled to understand.

Overall, the evidence of persistent infections—which threaten to relapse and spark new outbreaks—adds extra concern for an already alarming pathogen. But researchers are hopeful that the study also provides a way forward for research into defeating this stage of infection.

"Understanding the molecular–virological mechanisms of [Ebola virus] persistence is of paramount importance, including the conditions that favour persistence and reactivation and the time frame in which persistence may occur," the authors conclude. "Our study clarifies that a robust rhesus monkey model for [Ebola virus] persistence could be developed."

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/in-seemingly-healthy-survivors-cryptic-ebola-may-lurk-in-immune-cells/


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 20 2017, @04:31PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 20 2017, @04:31PM (#541968)

    Have you ever thought about why some diseases produce such violent response of our body's defenses, a cytokine storm, causing quick death even without pathogen getting hold of major parts of our tissues? Isn't it counterproductive? How we as a species survived that in the past without adapting to lower our immune response?
    Perhaps lethality and difficult clinical picture of Ebola patients is evolutionary trait which in the past helped human communities survive by stopping disease from spreading far. That would mean that by treating it and saving patients from death, we are helping pathogen escape our defenses and spread to the rest of us.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday July 20 2017, @05:44PM (2 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday July 20 2017, @05:44PM (#541991)

    It's not counterintuitive. This recent epidemic was massive because, instead of killing over 90%, this strain of Ebola was only killing about 50%.
    Diseases which are too debilitating don't propagate, unless they easily infect the caretakers of their victims, and their mutation potential is lower (for lack of time or varied host exposure). From the epidemiology perspective, a mild Ebola is a lot worse than an instant-killer one.
    (see the flu for opposite example: spreads crazy fast, kills only weak hosts, mutates like there's gonna be a vaccine tomorrow)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 20 2017, @06:16PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 20 2017, @06:16PM (#542014)

      mutates like there's gonna be a vaccine tomorrow

      And here I was worrying about all the human parties I'm missing :( Now I've got a whole nother realm to worry about!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 21 2017, @04:02AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 21 2017, @04:02AM (#542171)

      Before this one the only patients they saw were already very sick. This time around enough data was collected to show many exposed people never got sick. It is like any other virus in that way, only ~15% of people are really susceptible when otherwise healthy.
      https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/health/ebola-immunity.html [nytimes.com]

      This is all common sense to someone with a sane/non-scam interpretation of measles and basic understanding of actual statistics (not NHST) by the way.