Ebola virus may lurk in survivors for many years

doi:10.1126/science.371.6535.1188

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.371.6535.1188
	Ebola virus may lurk in survivors for many years
	Kai Kupferschmidt
	2021-03-19
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	Virus that lay dormant in a survivor of the devastating Ebola epidemic in West Africa between 2013 and 2016 apparently triggered a new outbreak in Guinea in January, genomic analyses show. Sequencing the virus from the Guinea outbreak, which has so far sickened at least 18 people and killed nine, found it was virtually identical to the strain that ravaged Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia more than 5 years ago. Researchers knew the Ebola virus can linger in the human body and ignite fresh outbreaks for well over a year—but not 5 years. “This is pretty shocking,” says virologist Angela Rasmussen of Georgetown University. The finding raises tricky questions about how to prevent such outbreaks without further stigmatizing Ebola survivors. Until recently, scientists assumed new Ebola outbreaks start when the virus makes the leap from wildlife to people. But some of the more than 15,000 survivors of the West African epidemic were found to harbor the virus in places where the immune system can't reach, such as the eyes, testes, and cerebrospinal fluid. How it survives there, apparently hardly replicating, is unclear. But a resurgence in Guinea in 2016 originated from a survivor who shed the virus in his semen more than 500 days after his recovery and infected a sexual partner. The ongoing Ebola outbreak in North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was started by sexual transmission from a survivor of the 2020 outbreak there. Guinea's new outbreak was detected after several people who attended the January funeral of a nurse fell ill and died. The country officially declared an Ebola outbreak on 14 February. Since then, the Guinea Center for Research and Training in Infectious Diseases (CERFIG), the country's National Hemorrhagic Fever Laboratory, and the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal, have all sequenced virus samples. On 12 March on the website virological.org, the three groups agreed the outbreak was caused by the Makona strain of the Zaire ebolavirus species, just like the West African epidemic; the genome of the new virus differs at only 12 locations from that of the earlier one. Given that similarity, the virus can't be a new introduction from wildlife, says infectious disease physician Eric Delaporte of the University of Montpellier, a member of one of the three teams. The nurse, who was diagnosed with typhoid and malaria before she died, was not known to be an Ebola survivor, but she could have had contact with a survivor privately or through her job, or she might have been infected herself years ago and had few symptoms. “Figuring out what exactly happened is one of the biggest questions now,” says Dan Bausch, a veteran of several Ebola outbreaks who leads the United Kingdom's Public Health Rapid Support Team. With three outbreaks now apparently caused by survivors, humans seem just as likely as wildlife to be the source of new Ebola outbreaks, Delaporte says: “This is clearly a new paradigm for how these outbreaks start.” The question now is how to prevent these resurgences—perhaps, Bausch suggests, with new therapeutics that can clear the virus from survivors' bodies. The findings raise another question: What will it mean for Ebola survivors, who already face serious stigmatization? “Will they be highlighted as a source of danger?” asks Frederic Le Marcis, a social anthropologist at the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon and the French Research Institute for Development, who is working in Guinea. “Will they be chased out of their own families and communities?” Bausch calls for an educational campaign in Ebola-affected countries explaining that unprotected sex with a survivor may pose a risk, but more casual contacts do not. Another important message should be that some people infected with Ebola show few symptoms, says CERFIG virologist Alpha Keita, meaning people may be survivors without knowing it. “So don't stigmatize Ebola survivors—you don't know that you are not a survivor yourself.”
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/319900
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Kai Kupferschmidt. Ebola virus may lurk in survivors for many years[J]. Science,2021.
APA	Kai Kupferschmidt.(2021).Ebola virus may lurk in survivors for many years.Science.
MLA	Kai Kupferschmidt."Ebola virus may lurk in survivors for many years".Science (2021).