Ebola: The Epidemic Accelerates * Analysis of the virus genome revealed that it mutated rapidly as it spread

A study conducted by brave researchers in Sierra Leone, some of whom died of the disease, shows that the origin of the outbreak was a single transmission from an animal to a human, and that the virus split from the viruses that caused previous epidemics about a decade ago

Researchers from Sierra Leone led by Agustin Guba, who treated the first Ebola patients in the country, including a pregnant woman who contracted the virus after attending the funeral of the victim of the disease in Guinea, took the opportunity to study the genome sequence of 99 viruses from the blood of 78 Ebola patients. This is reported by the news website of the journal Nature.

Yesterday the World Health Organization announced that the mortality rates in the four West African countries where the Ebola virus has re-emerged: Liberia, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Guinea, exceed 50%. According to the data, there are 3,069 diagnosed cases and of these, 1,552 people died from the disease. It was also stated in the update that in the last three weeks there has been a significant acceleration in the spread of the virus and about 40% of the diagnosed cases occurred during this period

In an article published in the journal Science, they write that the information may help in planning diagnostic kits, medicines and vaccines. The Ebola epidemic has so far caused the death of 1,400 people, including five of the partners in Gova's article.

The findings were published on July 31 Contains the largest collection of genetic information on Ebola to date. To obtain them, the researchers had to take blood samples from the deceased and bring them for testing, mainly Kenema. They used the solutions that neutralize the virus and sent them for flooring to the Broad Institute in Caveridge, Massachusetts.
The researchers sequenced the genome of each of the patients over 2,000 times and were able to track the mutations that the virus underwent as it passed from patient to patient and the advantage of this study over a previous study conducted in Guinea was that the researchers were able to isolate different mutations in the same patient.
By comparing the new data from Sierra Leone with those from Guinea, the researchers discovered that Ebola was brought to Sierra Leone by the 12 participants in the funeral in Guinea, and that the outbreak in West Africa originated from a single event in which the virus passed from an animal to a human.
Further comparisons led the researchers to hypothesize that the virus that caused the outbreak is separate from the viruses that caused previous Ebola epidemics about ten years ago. It accumulated 395 mutations between then and June 2014, when team members collected the last samples participating in the study, with fifty mutations added during the current outbreak.

And in the meantime, a positive turn in the fight against the epidemic was recorded last week, when two American aid workers who contracted Ebola and were flown from Nigeria to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, were declared to have recovered from the disease. The two, Kent Brantley - a doctor working in the humanitarian aid group Samaritan's Purse and Nancy Raitbull, from SIM USA managed to defeat the virus, which kills 52% of its victims, with a treatment previously only tried on monkeys.

A potential treatment for the Sudanese strain of Ebola could help curb future outbreaks

Ebola is a rare, but deadly disease caused by about five strains of viruses. None of these strains have a treatment. One of the deadliest strains is the Sudanese Ebola virus (SUDV). Although it is not the one responsible for the current deadly epidemic in West Africa, it has been a common factor in previous outbreaks, the most recent of which was in 2012.
In a new study that appears in the journal ACS Chemical Biology Researchers report that it will soon be possible to treat patients infected with SUDV.

John Day, Sidhu Sachasdev, Jonathan Lay and their colleagues explain that 50-90 percent of Ebola patients died after experiencing the typical symptoms of the disease, which include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding. The two main strains are the Zairian Ebola virus currently affecting West Africa, although less attention has been directed to the Sudanese virus. The team studied an antibody previously developed by Day's group. The virus has been successfully tested in mice, but the human immune system may recognize the antibodies to it as foreign and eventually get rid of them and prevent the antibody from treating the disease. To avoid this situation, they developed a "human" version of the antibody.

In recently published work, team members assembled the specific Ebola virus-blocking part of the mouse antibody onto a human antibody scaffold and made several changes to this molecule. They identified two variants that were able to repel the SUDV in laboratory tests on cells and mice. "These antibodies represent strong vaccine candidates for the treatment of SUDV infection," say the researchers.

However, as mentioned, this research could help during future outbreaks of the Sudanese Ebola virus.

Translated by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature.com Ebola virus mutating rapidly as it spreads, copyright 2014

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• New insights into the Ebola virus, following the unprecedented outbreak in West Africa
• WHO: The Ebola virus is out of control; 729 have perished so far
• A thousand Ebola victims; The World Health Organization has declared an international emergency
• A safe version of the Ebola virus has been developed
• An experimental drug for Ebola achieved good results in monkeys