Haemorrhagic fever / Ebola outbreaks have been reported - accident, natural or bio-weapon?

[Bob]

Fear of more relapses.. Sierra Leone group of "cured" Ebola cases reported - Reuters reports.

Doctors and health officials in Sierra Leone told Reuters that a handful of mystery deaths among discharged patients may also be types of Ebola relapses, stirring fear that the deadly virus may last far longer than previously thought in the body, causing other potentially lethal complications.

Diagnoses have not been made, partly because of a lack of relevant medical training and insufficient equipment for detecting a virus that can hide in inaccessible corners of the body - such as the spinal fluid or eyeball.

In Scottish nurse Cafferkey's case, the virus in her brain caused meningitis. (That is the complication that hospitalized her this time)

Dr. Dan Kelly, founder of non-profit organization Wellbody Alliance who has worked on Ebola in Sierra Leone, estimates that relapsing Ebola might affect 10 percent of all recovered patients.

He said this was based on two cases, including Cafferkey's, where the live virus was detected among the roughly 20 survivors treated in Europe and the United States.

Other experts have declined to give an estimate, saying it is too early to tell.

"One case reminds me of Pauline but we were unable to find a laboratory willing to test the patient before the patient died," he said. "In West Africa it (relapsing Ebola) is mostly undiagnosed, hardly treated and people are certainly dying of it."

Confirmation of such relapses would prolong for a third year the struggle to defeat a virus that has killed nearly 11,300 people and ravaged the economies of some of the world's poorest countries.

Guinea is the only nation in West Africa that still has new confirmed cases. Liberia has been declared Ebola-free while Sierra Leone has gone 25 days without a case.

But Ebola survivors continue to die under mysterious circumstances, health officials say.

hmmm...

[avid]

Clutching at straws for media attention, possibly even sacrificing against reality/truth to 'save face'......? Or other diversionary tactics, Lockerbie is being re-dredged with an unrealistic vengeance in the 'western media'.

[Cidersomerset]

From article........

Dr Michael Jacobs, who is treating Ms Cafferkey at the Royal Free Hospital
in London, said: "Pauline has become unwell by meningitis caused by the Ebola virus.

Ebola caused meningitis in nurse Pauline Cafferkey


5 hours ago
From the section Glasgow & West Scotland

A Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola while working in West Africa
is recovering well after the virus caused her to develop meningitis.

Pauline Cafferkey, 39, was readmitted to an isolation unit at the Royal
Free Hospital in London earlier this month after suffering an apparent relapse.

Health officials confirmed she had been diagnosed with meningitis caused
by Ebola and had a "long recovery ahead".

Ms Cafferkey, from South Lanarkshire, contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone.

Dr Michael Jacobs, who is treating Ms Cafferkey at the Royal Free Hospital
in London, said: "Pauline has become unwell by meningitis caused by the Ebola virus.


Read More

"But to be very clear about this, she hasn't been re-infected with the Ebola virus.





http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...-west-34592132

[Bob]

Let's make this perfectly CLEAR... (Source)

“She’s made significant progress in the past few days,” said Dr. Daniel Bausch, a technical consultant with the World Health Organization who has visited the Royal Free Hospital in London, which is treating the nurse, Pauline Cafferkey. Dr. Bausch added that Ms. Cafferkey had improved so much that she was even using an iPad.

Equally important, experts say, is what Ms. Cafferkey’s infection is telling them about virus, and the implications for other survivors in West Africa.

Dr. Bausch said that her blood and spinal fluid had tested positive for traces of the virus earlier this month.

Her blood is negative after it was recently retested. (that test has been the measure of "proving" treatment is successful... HOWEVER.. all recent data is saying the VIRUS REMAINS in hidden spots")

Pauline Cafferkey had seemed to recover from Ebola.

She has been treated with an experimental anti-viral compound that is thought to work by incorporating itself into the genetic material while the Ebola virus is being copied, stopping a new virus from forming. While it is unknown whether the compound helped Ms. Cafferkey recover, it was shown to protect 12 primates against a lethal Ebola virus infection, said Travis Warren, principal investigator at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease in Fort Dietrich, Md.

Ms. Cafferkey’s doctor had seen a presentation about the compound, GS5734, at a recent conference. “When he came back to the U.K., he immediately contacted us and said he was requesting compassionate use of the drug,” said Norbert Bischofberger, chief scientific officer at Gilead Sciences in California, which produced the compound and safety tested it in humans.

Scientists are compiling what they have observed in animals and are finding that perhaps they should not have been surprised by her illness. In one case, macaques infected with Ebola began to recover, but two to three weeks after infection, “they’d start to deteriorate,” said Thomas W. Geisbert a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

The monkeys showed signs of neurological disease.

Evidence of the virus was found in their brains and other organs not typically infected by Ebola, said Lisa Hensley, a scientist with the National Institutes of Health. Because the phenomenon was so rare, and the number of animals affected so small, other scientists who have seen similar results were not sure what to make of it.

One question is why the virus persisted so long in Ms. Cafferkey, who became infected in Sierra Leone, where she had gone as a volunteer, and what it was doing in that time. Clues may come from studies of Ebola in nature. Ebola is thought to persist in bats without causing disease.

It may be that in certain immunologically protected parts of the human body, including the central nervous system, it may be replicating at a very low level.

Scientists have found no evidence PREVIOUSLY that Ebola is capable of going dormant in human cells and then reactivating.

At a meeting on Wednesday at Fort Dietrich, experts discussed whether Ms. Cafferkey’s second illness could have been caused by the virus beginning to replicate more intensely again or by the immune system finally gaining access to the last pocket of virus.

In health surveys, survivors of Ebola and a similar virus, Marburg, have reported neurological symptoms and other complaints.

[Bob]

Numbers going UP in Guinea -

Guinea records three new cases of Ebola, brings total to nine..

Three more people in Guinea have been infected with the Ebola virus, a senior health official said on Wednesday, further dampening hopes of an imminent end to the world's worst recorded outbreak of the disease.

The three were infected in Forecariah in western Guinea from the family of a woman who died of Ebola and whose body was handled without appropriate protection, said Fode Tass Sylla, spokesman for the national center for the fight against Ebola.

"In all, nine sick people are being treated at our centres throughout the country and most are connected to the dead woman," he told Reuters, adding that authorities had known of the three fresh cases since Saturday.

(Source - Reuters)

[Bob]

From University of Pennsylvania - new understanding in how to stop virus' ability to multiply..

CALCIUM CHANNEL BLOCKERS

Calcium channel blocker (CCBs) are drugs that can increase the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart.

CCBs are a class of drugs normally used to treat high blood pressure, angina, abnormal heart rhythms, migraines, pulmonary hypertension..

Earlier in this thread, it was discussed one doctor's breakthru in treating Ebola infection by using a heart drug..

That did not go un-noticed.

Here is what is happening:

A new study led by Bruce Freedman and Ronald Harty in the Department of Pathobiology of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine demonstrates a way to do that, by reducing the ability of the virus to exit a host cell and spread.

Their work showed that blocking a calcium-signaling pathway could inhibit not only the Ebola virus, but also Marburg, Lassa and Junin viruses, all sources of deadly infections.

The work paves the way toward designing a potential broad-spectrum drug that could serve as a therapy for a number of serious viral infections.

"Our work is aimed at handicapping the virus so that the immune system has time to respond," said Freedman.

"We could also imagine this type of drug would be part of a cocktail therapy, like those used for HIV, to cripple the virus at different stages of its life cycle," echoed Harty.

The research was published in the journal PLOS Pathogens. Freedman and Harty teamed with scientists from Fox Chase Chemical Diversity Center and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease on the study.

Because viruses must hijack host cell proteins to complete their life cycle and reproduce, the Penn Vet scientists have focused on developing drugs that interfere with the host proteins and mechanisms that viruses depend on.

They conducted initial experiments using non-infectious viral-like particles, or VLPs, the production of which is orchestrated by the virus' matrix protein and which bud from cells in a similar manner to the infectious virus. This allows for the observation of host-virus interactions without using dangerous live viruses.

Calcium signaling is a key regulator of many cell processes, and earlier studies by these authors had suggested that calcium was needed by these and other viruses. The researchers followed up by examining how cellular calcium levels responded when VLPs were being produced in cells. They found that virus matrix proteins triggered significant upticks in calcium levels, which were prevented when the researchers introduced a mutated version of a gene that encodes a calcium channel called ORAI1 into the host cells.

Next they looked directly at VLP production in normal cultured cells or cells with a mutation in ORAI1. Production of Ebola, Marburg, Lassa and Junin VLPs were all significantly lowered, as much as 100-fold, in the ORAI1 mutant cells, an indication that hemorrhagic fever virus budding relies on the ORAI1-dependent calcium signaling.

Further studies implicated another protein upstream from ORAI1, called STIM1, as also required to form VLPs. Suppressing expression of STIM1 in cultured cells caused VLP production to decline.

To see whether they could pharmacologically block VLP production in normal cells, the Penn researchers used three different ORAI1 inhibitors. Each substantially inhibited production of Ebola and Marburg VLPs.

With a growing confidence in ORAI1's role in VLP budding, the research went to the next level, using live infectious virus in USAMRIID's BSL 4 laboratory, which requires the highest levels of biocontainment. There, researchers carried out experiments similar to what had been done with the VLP assays.

First they used a genetic test, infecting either normal or mutant ORAI1 cells with Ebola, Marburg, Junin or Lassa viruses. They found that the virus spread significantly less in the ORAI1 mutant cells compared with the normal cells.

They then used one of the ORAI1 inhibitors tested earlier to see if it could reduce virus spread in cultured cells, and found that it lowered infection rates in a dose-dependent manner.

Finally, they confirmed that ORAI1 inhibition was blocking the ability of viruses to exit the cell, instead leaving the virus tethered to its host cell and unable to spread.

"We saw this in each of the viruses, so there seems to be a common requirement for calcium in the late stages of viral budding from the cell," Freedman said.

"One of the exciting aspects of this approach," Hardy said, "is its ability to provide broad-spectrum inhibition of budding of hemorrhagic fever viruses that we're interested in, as well as other viruses that bud using similar mechanisms."

The authors also noted that because the host mechanisms required for virus escape are common to a number of related viruses, it is less likely that viruses will develop strategies to evade this block than they might for strategies that target only virus functions.

[Bob]

Drug GS5734 part of the solution?

Pauline Cafferkey, the nurse treated in London for life-threatening complications months after she was apparently cured of Ebola, has been released from isolation and has returned to hospital in Glasgow.

In a statement before flying back to Scotland, Cafferkey expressed her gratitude to the hospital for saving her life a second time. “I am forever thankful for the amazing care I have received at the Royal Free Hospital,” she said. “For a second time, staff across many departments of the hospital have worked incredibly hard to help me recover and I will always be grateful to them and the NHS. I am looking forward to returning to Scotland and to seeing my family and friends again.”

At the time of Cafferkey’s meningitis diagnosis, Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, called it “frankly staggering”. He said: “I am not aware from the scientific literature of a case where Ebola has been associated with what we can only assume as life-threatening complications after someone has initially recovered, and certainly not so many months after.”

Dr Michael Jacobs, who treated Cafferkey at the Royal Free, described the situation as unprecedented. The World Health Organisation said she was the only known Ebola survivor to develop meningitis months later.

Cafferkey was treated with the experimental drug GS5734. Jacobs, infectious diseases consultant at the hospital, told a press conference in October: “This is the original Ebola virus she had many months ago which has been inside the brain, replicating at a very low level, and has now re-emerged to cause this clinical illness of meningitis. This is an unprecedented situation.”

Cafferkey’s relapse caused alarm and more than 40 of her contacts were offered vaccination against Ebola virus.

-- Source, the Guardian news service

[Bob]

Guinea in West Africa has just released the last 68 people who have been in quarantine since the last confirmed Ebola case had died. (see post 965 above)

CONAKRY (Reuters) - The final 68 people who had been in contact with an Ebola patient were released from quarantine on Saturday, said a senior health official, raising hopes of an end to the disease in the last West African country with confirmed cases.

Dr. Abdourahmane Bathily, head of the Ebola center in Forecariah in western Guinea, said the 68 contacts had emerged from quarantine at midnight on Saturday morning.

"There are no longer any people who had contact with a person infected by the Ebola virus," said Bathily.

He added that the last confirmed Ebola case was a baby in isolation, who should be released from a treatment center next week, allowing for the West African nation to begin its own countdown clock.

Ebola-affected areas must spend 42 days without a case to be declared free of the hemorrhagic fever, although after cases cropped up after Liberia's first Ebola-free declaration, the World Health Organisation has instituted an additional 90-day surveillance period.

Sources: "Ebola center in Forecariah in western Guinea", "Reuters"

[Cidersomerset]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eYOcMT3HY54

Saying 'Bye Bye' to Ebola in Sierra Leone with a happy song

17 November 2015 Last updated at 22:53 GMT


Sierra Leone is celebrating being free from Ebola.

On Saturday 7 November the World Health Organization gave the country
the all-clear after 42 days without a new case of the disease. To celebrate,
rapper Block Jones wrote a song called Bye Bye Ebola.

It has become a hit on YouTube and features twerking policemen and dancing
health workers. Neighbouring Guinea will also be officially declared Ebola free
if no new cases are reported in the next six weeks.

Video Journalist: Anne-Marie Tomchak

For more videos subscribe to BBC Trending's YouTube channel.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34849465

[Bob]

Ebola is Back ~

Liberia is now monitoring over 150 Ebola contacts as this hard-to-eradicate virus re-emerges

Liberia has placed 153 people under surveillance as it seeks to control a new Ebola outbreak in the capital more than two months after the country was declared free of the virus, health officials said.

Three Ebola cases emerged in Liberia on Friday. The first of the new patients was a 15-year-old boy called Nathan Gbotoe from Paynesville, a suburb east of the capital Monrovia. Two other family members have since been confirmed as positive and they are all hospitalized.

"We have three confirmed cases and have listed 153 contacts, and we have labeled them as high, medium and low in terms of the risk," Liberia's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francis Kateh told Reuters late on Saturday.

The previous resurgence of Ebola in Liberia is thought to have been via sexual transmission since the virus can exist in the semen of male survivors for at least nine months after infection, much longer than its incubation period in blood.

It is also theoretically possible for an infected animal to trigger a fresh chain of transmission.

[Cidersomerset]

WHO ‘failed to alert’ global community about Ebola outbreak allowing virus to spread further – panel

By David Icke on 24th November 2015 Medical/Health


RT NEWS.....

WHO 'failed to alert' global community about Ebola outbreak allowing virus to spread further – panel

Published time: 23 Nov, 2015 14:43


Medical workers in protective clothing arrive at Meixoeiro Hospital, transporting,
according to local authorities, a possible new Ebola patient, in Vigo, Spain, October
28, 2015. © Stringer / Reuters


‘Ebola has exposed the World Health Organization (WHO) as “unable to meet its
responsibility” to alert global communities about the outbreak of deadly diseases,
an independent panel of experts has stated in a new report.

Twenty experts from the Harvard Global Health Institute and the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analyzed the response to the Ebola epidemic and
published their report in medical journal the Lancet.

The response to the Ebola outbreak saw a number of failures, the authors of the
report found.

One example was during the initial phase of the epidemic (from December 2013 to
March 2014) when the first infections occurred in a remote area of Guinea, where
no outbreaks of Ebola had previously been identified.’

“The lack of capacity in Guinea to detect the virus for several months was a key
failure, allowing Ebola eventually to spread to bordering Liberia and Sierra Leone,”
the report said. This phase, among other things, underscored “inadequate
arrangements between governments and the WHO to share, validate, and respond
robustly to information on outbreaks,” it added.

Read more: WHO ‘failed to alert’ global community about Ebola outbreak allowing
virus to spread further – panel

https://www.rt.com/news/323113-ebola...ampaign=chrome

[Bob]

The young patient reported in post 970 above had died, of the complications from the Ebola infection. The quarantine potential cases now are up to about 160.

A 15-year-old boy died of Ebola in Liberia on Monday night, the first person in the country to perish from the disease since July, health officials say.

Two of the boy's family members, his father and brother, reportedly also have tested positive for the disease.

The Associated Press reports: "Health officials have identified nearly 160 people who might be at risk of being infected with the disease, including eight health-care workers 'who are at high risk because they came in direct contact with the boy,' said Sorbor George, a spokesman for the country's health ministry."

Liberian officials announced a resurgence of the disease last week, for the first time since the country was declared Ebola-free on Sept. 3. Liberia also had been declared free of Ebola on May 9, but four cases subsequently were reported.

In announcing the resurgence, officials said only that a patient was admitted to a hospital in the capital of Monrovia on Nov. 17 with fever, weakness and bleeding, classic symptoms of Ebola. The patient tested positive for the disease on Thursday and was placed in isolation.

[Bob]

Progress in treating ebola, even preventing it -

Progress has been made on developing vaccines, but there is still a need for antiviral therapies to protect health care workers and local populations in the event of future outbreaks.

Now, a new study suggests that gamma interferon, an FDA-approved drug, may have potential as an antiviral therapy to prevent Ebola infection when given either before or after exposure to the virus.

The findings, published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, show that gamma interferon, given up to 24 hours after exposure, inhibits Ebola infection in mice and completely protects the animals from death.

[ARE STATINS THE SECRET WEAPON AGAINST EBOLA?]

Ebola infection appears to be a stepwise process. First, the virus targets and infects macrophages or dendritic cells, two types of immune system cells found in the liver, spleen, and lymph nodes. Ebola then replicates in those cells. Following this initial infection, which happens at day 3 or 4 in non-human primates, Ebola virus is released into the blood and infects a plethora of other different cell populations.

“It goes from an early stage with a very targeted infection of only these few cell types, to everything being infected,” says Wendy Maury, professor of microbiology at the University of Iowa.

“We think what’s happening with gamma interferon is that it’s targeting macrophages and blocking the infection of those initial cell targets so you don’t get the second round of infection.”

SHEEP IN WOLF’S CLOTHING

The University of Iowa does not have a specializing BioSafety Level 4 (BSL4) lab that is required for experiment using Ebola virus, so the researchers made their initial findings using a surrogate virus, which targets and infects the same cells as Ebola, but does not cause the disease.

This Ebola lookalike—a sheep in wolf’s clothing—consists of a less dangerous vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) that expresses Ebola glycoproteins on its surface.

All of the results found using the surrogate virus were then repeated using mouse-adapted Ebola virus in the BSL4 lab of Maury’s longtime collaborator Robert Davey at Texas Biomedical Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

Gamma interferon inhibits the virus’s ability to infect human and mouse macrophages, in part by blocking virus replication in the cells. Pre-treating mice with interferon gamma 24 hours before exposure protects the animals from infection and death. The researchers were surprised to find that treatment up to 24 hours after what would have been a lethal exposure also completely protected the animals from death, and they could no longer detect any Ebola virus in the mouse’s cells.

[SCIENTISTS ARE TESTING ZOLOFT TO TREAT EBOLA]

The findings suggest that interferon gamma may be useful both as a prophylaxis and post-exposure treatment against Ebola. The team still has to determine how late gamma interferon can be given to the mice and still prevent infection. However, the results suggest a window of time after exposure when gamma interferon may be an effective antiviral therapy.

“My guess is that if you delay the gamma interferon too much, you miss this window of opportunity to block the infection in macrophage cells and the gamma interferon can no longer provide protection,” Maury says.

Maury and colleagues investigated how gamma interferon might be helping the cells fight off the Ebola virus. They identified that the expression of more than 160 genes in human macrophages is stimulated by gamma interferon. Introduction of some of these genes into cells was sufficient to prevent Ebola infection.

“This mechanistic information might suggest more precise drug targets rather than the broad effects, including adverse side-effects, that are produced by gamma-interferon,” she says.

Gamma interferon is already approved by the FDA to treat chronic granulomatous disease (an immune disease) and severe malignant osteopetrosis.

In addition to moving the studies into larger animal models, Maury next plans to study the ability of gamma interferon to inhibit Ebola infection in conjunction with other developing antivirals.

“Right now, there are no FDA-approved antiviral therapies for Ebola, but there are some being developed that target virus entry,” she says. “We know that gamma interferon blocks replication but not entry into cells. So combining an entry inhibitor with gamma interferon may allow us to reduce amount of gamma interferon needed and target two different steps in the virus’s life cycle, which has been shown in HIV to be critically important for controlling the virus.”

Source - University of Iowa (Main Page)

[Bob]

Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy

No new Ebola cases were reported in West Africa's outbreak region last week, and if no cases are reported as of Jan 14, the whole area will be considered free of virus transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today in an update.

In another development, the WHO confirmed that Liberia's recent cluster was due to lingering virus in an individual who had an earlier infection.

Guinea has now gone 30 days without a new case, and its outbreak will be considered over on Dec 28 if no new infections are detected. Sierra Leone was declared free of the virus on Nov 7.

As mentioned in an above post, Liberia was the last country to report cases, a family cluster that included a 15-year-old boy who died of his infection.

210 people linked with the cluster received the experimental VSV-EBOV vaccine as part of an ongoing ring-vaccination trial under way in the outbreak region.

In its update today, the WHO had new details on the investigation into the source of the family cluster, which it had suspected to be linked to lingering virus in a survivor. It said the cluster was sparked by reemergence in a previously infected individual.

A new clinical trial will be started shortly, that will involve offering the VSV-EBOV vaccine to people at risk for Ebola transmission from "survivors". EBOV is now known to linger (survive) within the EYE, sexual gonads. Normal blood tests can show "ALL CLEAR" when in-fact that the Ebola patient may still be infected. A patient's viral load in the initial blood test seems to be a good survival indicator. Those tests aren't able to determine the patient's "infectability" if the virus is latent, hiding in the Eye or gonads.

[ArrowD.]

Several doctors went to Sierra Leone to administer ozone therapy. They had positive results. Read their report here:
http://medicalozone.info/wp-content/...ures-Ebola.htm

[Bob]

Nigeria - Lassa Fever Death Toll Rises

Another haemorrhagic fever (Lassa fever) is re-appearing in some parts of the country, including Taraba, Nassarawa and Rivers states; this may lead to another epidemic in Nigeria if treatment/focus drops. Do not become complacent is the message.

Lassa fever is endemic to the area. Viral haemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) are a group of illnesses caused by four families of viruses. These are the Ebola and Marburg, Lassa fever, and yellow fever viruses. VHFs have common features: they affect many organs, damage the blood vessels, and affect the body's ability to regulate itself.

Nigeria had through November 6, 2015, reported 270 Lassa fever cases from 12 states, according to data from health officials. According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), two Lassa fever deaths were reported in Kano State last month.

A nationwide outbreak of Lassa fever in 10 states, in March 2014, led to the loss of 20 lives, out of the 319 reported cases. The affected states were Anambra, Bauchi, Ebonyi, Edo, Gombe, Imo, Nasarawa, Ondo, Plateau and Taraba.

Former Health Minister, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, had in April 2014, before the first case of Ebola was reported in July 2014, warned of outbreaks of Lassa fever, saying "some of these viruses belong to a group that causes similar diseases like yellow fever, which for 18 years now, we have not had a single case, but 18 years ago it devastated Nigeria.

Lagos — Member of the Lagos state house of assembly, Segun Olulade, has called on residents in the state to be cautious and report to the nearest hospital any symptoms of Lassa fever.

Olulade, who is the chairman house committee on health service, while reacting to the news from Taraba State, where the outbreak of Lassa fever has been confirmed, with one person dead and two others quarantined, advised Lagosians to look out for every symptoms of the disease and immediately report if any is discovered within the community.

Some of the symptoms according to the lawmaker include nasal bleeding, bleeding through the anus and mouth, adding that people usually get infected with the Lassa Virus after being exposed to infected rodents, while person to person transmission occurs through direct contact with the sick person.

Lassa fever is described as an acute viral haemorrhagic illness of one to four weeks duration that occurs in West Africa.

Experts say it is transmitted to humans via contact with food or household items contaminated with rodent urine or fecal matter.

(Source)

[Bob]

Within two days after the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa was declared 'over' by the WHO agency, a person died in Sierra Leone from the consequences of the disease.

It has been mentioned numerous times in this thread, until people fully appreciate and maintain proper biological barrier control of a person infected with a biohazard class IV hazard (maximum biosafety containment needed to prevent infection).. - - http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/10...ke-a-jv-virus/

Article NY Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/wo...eone.html?_r=0

The victim was a 22-year-old student from the Port Loko district, said Tunis Yahya, an official with Sierra Leone’s Health Ministry. The woman died on Jan. 12 and was found to have Ebola during routine swab testing for the virus.

Officials said there was no information yet on how the woman became infected. An investigation is underway. The W.H.O. has repeatedly warned that small flare-ups of the disease are likely because the virus can persist in the bodily fluids of some survivors for a variable length of time and in rare cases be transmitted to close contacts.


Deadliest Ebola Outbreak on Record Is Over, W.H.O. Says JAN. 14, 2016

At least 10 flare-ups have been reported in the past nine months in the three countries that were hardest hit by the outbreak: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. “The new flares, they’re the embers basically of this crisis,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, the health organization’s representative for the Ebola response.

[Bob]

Sierra Leone issues quarantine orders once again after the recent confirmed Ebola patient dies.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...thers-to-virus

More than 100 people in quarantine at this point..

A woman who died of Ebola this week in Sierra Leone may have exposed at least 27 others to the disease, an aid agency report claims, raising the risk of more cases just as the epidemic appeared to be ending.

Sierra Leone’s government on Saturday urged the public not to panic as it announced that more than 100 people had been quarantined, just as the country seemed to have overcome the epidemic.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) had declared that “all known chains of transmission have been stopped in west Africa”, meaning the area was officially free of the virus after a two-year epidemic that killed more than 11,300 people.

The WHO warned of potential flare-ups as survivors can carry the virus for months. The latest case is particularly worrying because authorities failed to follow basic health protocols, according to the report compiled by a humanitarian agency and released on Friday.

Health officials in Freetown said they had placed a total of 109 people who had been in contact with the student before her death in isolation.

Of those, 28 were considered “high risk” and three contacts had yet to be located, Ishmael Tarawally, the national coordinator of the Office of National Security, said at a press conference.

“We are worried and concerned.."

[Bob]

Sierra Leone - another Ebola case registered.

A second case of the deadly Ebola virus has been reported in the West African nation of Sierra Leone in as many weeks -- just seven days after health officials declared a major epidemic in the region had ended.

The two cases are connected. The latest patient -- a woman being treated in the capital, Freetown -- is an aunt of a 22-year-old woman who died of Ebola last week in Sierra Leone, World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said Thursday.

The aunt, who had cared for her sick niece, tested positive for the virus after developing symptoms while in quarantine Wednesday, Jasarevic said.

The latest cases have links to the neighboring country of Guinea, where the 22-year-old first became sick, the WHO has said.

(Source)

[Bob]

A positive treatment breakthrough..

Scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München discover that extracts of the medicinal plant Cistus incanus (Ci) prevent human immunodeficiency viruses from infecting cells. Active antiviral ingredients in the extracts inhibit docking of viral proteins to cells.

Antiviral activity of Cistus extracts also targets Ebola and Marburg viruses.

The results were published in Scientific Reports.

Virus infections are among the ten leading causes of death worldwide and represent a major global health challenge. Their control requires the continuous development of new and potent antiviral drugs/therapeutic options. Despite the availability of numerous drugs for chronic treatment of HIV/AIDS, new drugs are needed to prevent the emergence of drug resistant viral variants. Furthermore, new antiviral drugs are required for rapid treatment of acute infections by viruses like Marburg and Ebola viruses during acute viral outbreaks. A recent study by the team of Professor Ruth Brack-Werner and Dr. Stephanie Rebensburg from the Institute for Virology (VIRO) of the Helmholtz Zentrum München demonstrates that extracts of the medicinal plant attack HIV and Ebola virus particles and prevent them from multiplying in cultured cells.

HIV: broad activity, no resistance

The Brack-Werner team found potent activity of Ci extracts acted against a broad spectrum of clinical HIV-1 and HIV-2 isolates. This also included a virus isolate resistant against most available drugs. „Antiviral ingredients of Ci extracts target viral envelope proteins on infectious particles and prevent them from contacting host cells", Brack-Werner explains. No resistant viruses were detected during long-term treatment (24 weeks) with Ci extract, indicating that Ci extract attacks viruses without causing resistance.

The Brack-Werner study suggests that commercial herbal extracts from plants like Cistus incanus or other plants like Pelargonium sidoides are promising material for the development of scientifically validated antiviral phytotherapeutics.

Since antiviral activity of Ci extracts differs from all clinically approved drugs, Ci-derived products could be an important complementation to current established drug regimens", says Brack-Werner.

Ci extracts not only blocked different HIV isolates, but also virus particles carrying Marburg and Ebola viral envelope proteins.

Analysis of the antiviral components of the extract revealed the presence of multiple antiviral ingredients that may act in combination.

These results firmly establish broad antiviral activity of Ci extracts against various major human viral pathogens, including previously reported activity against influenza viruses.

Potential applications of Ci extract for global control of lethal virus infections

Further development of these plant extracts may advance global treatment and control of virus infections in various ways. Thus these plant extracts may be useful starting material for the development of potent herbal agents against selected virus infections.

Another application could be their development into crèmes or gels (i.e. microbicides) that prevent transmission of viruses like HIV during sexual intercourse. Finally, these plant extracts represent promising collections of natural antiviral agents for the discovery of new antiviral molecules.

Future work in the Brack-Werner lab will focus on investigating the antiviral potential of these plant-derived products for applications in humans and detailed analysis of their active antiviral ingredients.

(Source)