Filoviruses — like all RNA viruses — presumably have a potential for rapid evolution because of an inherently high error rate of the virus encoded polymerase and a lack of repair mechanisms. The consequence may be a spectrum of genetic variants that are selected by the host for different transmissibility, virulence, and other biological properties."
Marburg and Ebola Viruses Heinz Feldmann, Hans-Dieter Klenkhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065352708607332 Because the disease can only affect animals that have to little ascorbate, nearly always those that do not make their own ascorbate, then in one sense it's like a global antibody the culls out defective genetics in animal species. It turns the human body to soup by eating the connective tissue that holds the body together so it can extract the ascorbate out of it to use to make new copies of itself.
Genetics, evolution and ecology of the Ebola virus
Also included are other highly pathogenic viruses.
What does a hospital do for Ebola
It varies. In Africa it has up to a 90% lethality rate. In the US and UK no infected citizen died on home soil. While it's only a handful of people, it's still a 0% mortality rate or 100% survivable which ever way you look at it.
Fruit of Gabon
Genetics and evolution of the Ebola virus.
Animals that can catch Ebola
The short answer is any animal with scurvy is susceptible. Animals that make their own ascotbate are generally not susceptible to the virus but it can be induced if serum ascorbate is low.
Discovery of the Marburg virus
Marburg is only half as lethal as Ebola and was discovered in 1967 in Marburg Germany at a lab that made polio vaccine from wild monkey kidneys. One was infected with Marburg and workers began dying and infecting other people. A new type of virus proved to be responsible and a new family was created for these, the Filovirus family. Less than a decade later the next member of the family would be discovered when a breakout of Ebola occurred simultaneously in Sudan and Zaire.
Implications of selenium
The US Food and Nutrition Board lowered the RDA for selenium in the year 2000 from 70 mcg for men and 55 mcg/day for women to 55 mcg/day for both.Evidence now suggets 100 mcg is the level at which Seactivity begins. Also most people do not even achieve the RDA level in the first place. One brazil nut a day supplies more than enough for a healthy person, 2 should be enough for a sick person akthough it should be noted for years poeple have eaten more than 2 Brazil nuts a day and managed to survive.
Ecology of highly pathogenic viruses
Organisms living totally in isolation lacking evolutionary and competitive pressures tend not to evolve. Thus interaction with similar and unrelated species drives diversity. In the regions where pathogenic Ebola is found other common pathogens are worth enumerating due to potential interactions.
More toxic and more potent then Selenium
It was only in 1957 that the importance of selenium to the immune system was discovered, prior to that it was regarded as a toxic pollutant. Tellurium suffers the same fate. Now however, evidence is beginning to trickle in that tellurium, by virtue of being the same row of the periodic table as Oxygen, Sulphur and Selenium has similar properties to Selenium but is more active. Caution needs to be exercised still as Tellurium is also more toxic than selenium. But as a future direction tellurium may have promise in future medicine - they did have a place in ancient medicine. Recall that "Head and Shoulders" shampoo uses selenium to kill bacteria and similarly so, "tellurite" has been used in the past as a bactericide.
The 2014 Outbreak Timeline - Chronology of the EBV Outbreak.
"On March 23, 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) was notified of an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Guinea. On August 8, the WHO declared the epidemic to be a “public health emergency of international concern.”
"These data indicate that without drastic improvements in control measures, the numbers of cases of and deaths from EVD are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in the coming months."
These are the most significant events:
"We've now seen several cases that don't have any symptoms at all, asymptomatic cases," said Anavaj Sakuntabhai who suggested the virus might be mutating. 29 January 2015 Last updated at 00:55 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31019097
Ebola Not Mutating, Scientists Say Wednesday, May 13, 2015 http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_152522.html
British nurse cured of Ebola credits new drug - and strawberries "Back in Britain, the decision to try MIL 77 was not difficult. “I said ‘I have Ebola, so, yes, I’d rather have that than high-dose vitamin C,’” she said" “I reckon I’ve had 10 punnets,” joked Corporal Anna Cross, who smiled nervously as she talked for the first time after her treatment at the Royal Free Hospital in north London." (10 punnets would be about equal to two 1000mg injections a day) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11499584/Nurse-who-became-first-in-world-to-be-cured-of-Ebola-by-experimental-drug-is-discharged.html
Semen found infected after 175 days, twice the previous record. April 2015 http://io9.com/ebola-survivors-are-being-urged-to-abstain-from-sex-1698996342
Did real-time epidemic modeling save lives in West Africa? 28 May 2015 | http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/how-computer-modelers-took-on-the-ebola-outbreak
How the virus was spread
A virus that killed two teenagers in Congo in 2009 is a completely new type, related to rabies but causing the bleeding and rapid death that makes Ebola infection so terrifying, scientists reported on Thursday. They’re searching for the source of the virus, which may be transmitted by insects or bats. The new virus is being named Bas-Congo virus, for the area where it was found. Researchers are finding more and more of these new viruses, in part because new tests make it possible, but also in the hope of better understanding them so they can prevent pandemics of deadly disease. The virus infected a 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl in the same village in Congo in 2009. They didn’t stand a chance, says Joseph Fair of Metabiota, a company that investigates pathogens. Fair is in the Democratic Republic of Congo now, under contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to help battle an ongoing Ebola outbreak. “They expired within three days,” Fair said in a telephone interview. “It was a very rapid killer.” A few days later a male nurse who cared for the two teenagers developed the same symptoms and survived. Samples from the lucky nurse have been tested and it turned out a completely new virus had infected him, Fair and other researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS pathogens. The genetic sequences went to Dr. Charles Chiu, of the University of California, San Francisco. “We were astounded that this patient had sequences in his blood from a completely unknown and unidentified virus,” Chiu said. They weren’t expecting that. “Congo is very much known for having Ebola and Marburg outbreaks. Yet about 20 percent of the time we have hemorrhagic fever outbreaks that are completely negative, which means unknown causes and they are not Ebola.” The sequencing puts this new virus on its own branch of the bad virus family tree -- somewhat related to Ebola and the virus that causes Lassa fever, another horrific killer, and most closely related to the rhabdoviruses. This family usually only infects animals with one notable exception -- rabies. But rabies is not known to cause hemorrhaging. It’s plenty horrible on its own, of course, killing virtually all patients if they aren’t vaccinated soon after infection. A nurse who took care of the first infected nurse had antibodies to the new virus. It doesn’t look like the teenagers infected one another, says Fair, but they probably infected the first nurse, who probably infected the second. Tests of other villagers have found no more evidence of the virus, however, which is good news.
