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Archive Number 20091006.3469 Published Date 06-OCT-2009 Subject PRO/AH> Ebola & Marburg hemorrhagic fever, Egyptian fruit bat - W. Africa EBOLA AND MARBURG HEMORRHAGIC FEVER, EGYPTIAN FRUIT BAT - WEST AFRICA ********************************************************************* A ProMED-mail post ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases Date: Fri 2 Oct 2009 Source: Bloomberg.com [edited] Virus Hunters Find Ebola, Marburg Source in Fruit Bat ----------------------------------------------------- Scientists are closing in on the source of Ebola and Marburg [hemorrhagic fevers], 2 of the world's most-lethal infectious diseases. After a 5-year search in the jungles of Africa, an international team of virus hunters has identified...

Reston ebolavirus (Rebov) has only been seen in monkeys and humans previously and, unlike other types of Ebola, it is not known to cause illness in people. Researchers say it is theoretically possible for the virus to mutate in pigs into a form that might sicken people. The Philippines had tested 141 people, the researchers said, and six of them who either worked on pig farms or with swine products were found with antibodies to the Ebola-Reston virus, which means they might have been infected by pigs at some time. However, they showed no signs of illness. Rebov belongs to...

Don't worry, it can't hurt you—yet. Scientists have identified Reston ebolavirus—a member of the deadly Ebola group of hemorrhagic viruses—in domestic swine from the Philippines. The virus, which looks like a piece of yarn with a slight bend, is the only Ebola pathogen not known to cause disease in humans. Even so, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta considers it a biosafety level 4 pathogen, reserved for the most dangerous and exotic diseases. Ebola and the closely related Marburg viruses are highly contagious, causing vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding with death rates as high as 90 percent....

An inventory of deadly germs and toxins at an Army biodefense lab in Frederick found more than 9,200 vials of material that was unaccounted for in laboratory records, Fort Detrick officials said Wednesday. The 13 percent overage mainly reflects stocks left behind in freezers by researchers who retired or left Fort Detrick since the biological warfare defense program was established there in 1943, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. He said the found material included Korean War-era serum samples from patients with Korean hemorrhagic fever, a disease still of interest...

ATLANTA — Scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus. The so-called "Lujo" virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall. Four of them died, but a fifth survived, perhaps helped by a medicine recommended by the scientists. It's not clear how the first person became infected, but the bug comes from a family of viruses found in rodents, said Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in the discovery. "This one is really, really aggressive" he said of the virus. A paper on the virus by...

A Canadian scientist has been arrested for smuggling 22 vials stolen from Canada's National Microbiology Lab, used in Ebola and HIV research, into the United States, Canadian and US officials said Wednesday. Konan Michel Yao, 42, "was taken into custody" while crossing from Manitoba into North Dakota A Public Health Agency of Canada spokeswoman [said] Yao "was working on vaccines for the Ebola virus and HIV, among other things." The Ivory Coast-born scientist is said to have studied at Laval University in Quebec and briefly worked at the University of Manitoba's plant sciences department.

A researcher who may have been exposed to the deadly ebolavirus was declared healthy and released from isolation at a German hospital Thursday [2 Apr 2009], having been spared the horrific symptoms of the disease. The woman had accidentally pricked her finger 3 weeks ago [12 Mar 2009] with a needle used to inject Ebola into mice. It was not known if the virus actually entered her bloodstream, but she was given an experimental vaccine just in case. The vaccine had never been tested on humans. Scientists don’t know if the vaccine saved her or if she was simply lucky...

A German researcher who accidentally exposed herself to the dreaded Ebola virus is apparently in the clear: the virus's three-week incubation period expired yesterday, her supervisor tells ScientificAmerican.com. On March 12, a 45-year old virologist (whose name was not released) at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, accidentally jabbed herself with a syringe containing the virus that causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever, which kills up to 90 percent of its victims. It's symptoms: fever, body aches, diarrhea, vomiting, red eyes, and internal and external bleeding. The slip occurred while the researcher, who had been studying new tests...

Experimental vaccine used in Ebola exposure case BERLIN – It was a nightmare scenario: A scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice. Within hours, members of a tightly bound, yet far-flung community of virologists, biologists and others were tensely gathered in a trans-Atlantic telephone conference trying to map out a way to save her life.

The accidental exposure of a scientist to the Ebola virus last week has triggered a series of teleconferences by Ebola scientists on two sides of the Atlantic united around a single goal: to help save the life of their colleague, an unnamed virologist at the Bernard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, who pricked herself in the finger during an experiment. No approved treatments exist for Ebola, but at the sessions, researchers and physicians discussed the results from a raft of recent studies, some not yet published, into treatments that could prevent or slow the disease, which has...

PANDI, Bulacan — At least six members of the so-called "depopulation team" at Win Farm in this town where 6,000 pigs are infected with the dreaded Ebola Reston virus have been suffering from "some kind of illness," a health officer said. Dr. Joy Gomez, public health officer of Bulacan, confirmed at yesterday’s press briefing that six members of the team have experienced dizziness, headache, and fatigue. The sickness experienced by the workers might be due to the protective suits that they are wearing, Gomez said, adding that the discomfort caused by the suits, which are uncomfortably hot, could become unbearable...

The first known case of Marburg hemorrhagic fever in the United States was treated at Lutheran Medical Center in January 2008, it was announced Friday. The disease, which is caused by a virus indigenous to Africa, is transmitted by contact with infected animals or the bodily fluids of infected humans. The patient, who was not identified, had apparently contracted the virus when he visited Uganda. While in that country, he had visited a python cave in Maramagambo Forest in Queen Elizabeth Park, where he came into contact with fruit bats, which are capable of harboring the Marburg virus. The CDC...

In the first known case of what may be transmission of the Ebola virus from a pig to a human, a pig handler in the Philippines has tested positive for a strain of the virus, world health officials and the Philippine government announced Friday. But the strain — Ebola Reston — is not known to be dangerous to humans, and the worker, who was infected at least six months ago, is healthy, officials said. The development is worrying because pigs are mixing vessels in which other viruses from humans and animals exchange genetic material, possibly creating strains that are more...

A person has been infected but is not ill with the Ebola Reston virus after coming into contact with sick pigs in the northern Philippines, the health secretary said today, adding that the risk to others is negligible. Blood samples were taken from 50 pig farm and slaughterhouse workers in Bulucan and Pangasinan provinces where pigs were found to be infected with the virus in December. One tested positive for Ebola Reston virus antibodies, indicating the worker was exposed to the virus more than six months ago, Health Secretary Francisco Duque said. The person, whose identity has not been released,...

When the Ebola Reston virus was discovered in pigs in the Philippines last year, it marked the virus's first known foray outside primates, and raised fears of a potential threat to human health.Is an Ebola-virus subtype killing pigs?REUTERS Last week, a joint mission of 22 international health and veterinary experts returned from investigating the outbreak with more questions than answers about the virus's pathology and epidemiology.The Ebola Reston virus was first discovered, in 1989, in crab-eating macaques imported to the United States from the Philippines. Since then, the virus has killed most infected monkeys, yet had no effect on the...

OTHER BUGS ACTING BADLY _______________________________________________________ International experts to study ebola reston INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC and animal health experts arrived on Tuesday to start a joint risk assessment on the ebola reston contamination of local hogs, officials of the Agriculture department said yesterday. Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III (R), flanked by international experts, addresses a press conference in Manila for an update on the outbreak of ebola reston at two pig farms north of the capital. The experts are (L to R) Kate Glynn of World Organization for Animal Health, Juan Lubroth and Kazuyuki Tsurumi of the Food and Agriculture Organization,...

A deadly Ebola outbreak in the central Democratic Republic of Congo has killed nine and infected 21, the UN-sponsored radio Okapi quoted the health minister as saying Thursday.

Philippine officials tucked into servings of lechon, the popular dish of roasted whole pig, in front of television cameras on Thursday to reassure the public of the safety of the national staple meat after the discovery among hogs near Manila of a strain of the Ebola virus. Arthur Yap, agriculture secretary, and Francisco Duque, health secretary, said the Ebola Reston virus, which had never been found in pigs before, presented a low health risk for humans and was different from the deadly African variety. The World Health Organisation was reported to be looking into whether there was any chance humans...

Scientists report the discovery of a new species of Ebola virus, provisionally named Bundibugyo ebolavirus, November 21 in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens. The virus, which was responsible for a hemorrhagic fever outbreak in western Uganda in 2007, has been characterized by a team of researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia the Uganda Virus Research Institute; the Uganda Ministry of Health; and Columbia University. Ebola virus infection in humans causes severe disease for which there is presently no vaccine or other treatment. Case fatalities range historically between 53 and 90%. Therefore, research efforts into...

Zambia: It's Not Ebola!The Times of Zambia (Ndola)8 October 2008THE woman from Zambia who died in South Africa from a mysterious disease was in fact afflicted by cerebral edema and multi-organ failure, putting to rest suspicions that she was hit by the deadly ebola, experts have confirmed.Five experts who carried out the investigations on two of the four deceased people revealed that the woman could have died from suspected viral infection from a tick bite that she incurred in Lusaka.Experts from Specialty Emergency Services (SES) Corpmed Medical Centre (CMC) and Wilderness Safari said that the first victim of the disease,...

Finding could lead to new therapies to thwart spread of this contagious, and mostly fatal diseaseIn a breakthrough that could eventually help tame one of the deadliest virsuses known to man, researchers have laid bare the key to Ebola's power: a lone protein that resides on its surface. The discovery paves the way for new treatments that target and destroy the designated culprit, rendering impotent a virus that, though rare, can kill up to 90 percent of the people it infects. The so-called Ebola virus glycoprotein, or "spike protein," was first discovered a decade ago and has been a target...

KAMPALA, Dec 10, 2007 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Another seven people were killed by the deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Uganda as twelve new cases were reported over the weekend amid an outbreak that has sounded alarm in ten out of 79 districts across the country. A total of 29 people have so far been killed by Ebola out of 113 infections as of Monday morning, Sam Okware, chairperson of the National Task Force for Ebola, told Xinhua by telephone on Monday. He said seven new cases were reported in the western district of Bundibugyo which has been hit hard...

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda has 101 suspected cases of Ebola fever and hundreds more people being closely monitored, officials said on Friday, as fear grew in Uganda and neighboring countries that the deadly virus might spread. Twenty two people have so far died of the fever and Minister of State for primary health-care Dr. Emmanuel Otaala told journalists 11 health workers have fallen sick. "Cumulatively, we have 101 cases," he said. Another 338 people are being monitored because they came into contact with those infected by the virulent hemorrhagic fever, which often causes victims to bleed to death through the...

Ugandan health workers hit by Ebola, causing panic KAMPALA, Uganda: Health workers are among the dead in an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, spreading panic among those needed to help. Doctors and nurses did not at first know what they were facing, so failed to protect themselves, according to a lawmaker representing the western area at the center of the outbreak. Experts say the Ebola subtype that sparked the outbreak is new and the classic Ebola symptoms were not always present, slowing diagnosis. "We are facing a crisis in health care here," said Jane Alisemera, the lawmaker representing Bundibugyo, the district...

Wed Dec 5, 3:17 AM ET KAMPALA (AFP) - The Ebola virus has killed two doctors in western Uganda, bringing the toll to 21 since the strain first appeared in September, an official said on Wednesday. "The sad news is that our doctor who was admitted in Mulago died last night and a senior clinic officer who had been in critical condition died this morning," said Samuel Kazinga, district commissioner for Bundibugyo, the epicentre of the new outbreak. Kampala's Mulago hospital is the largest in the country. Some health officials have said that a lack of appropriate equiment in Mulago...

Uganda Ebola death toll hits 19 3 hours ago KAMPALA (AFP) — The dreaded Ebola virus has killed 19 people in western Uganda since September, officials said Tuesday, with new outbreaks of linked diseases surfacing in other parts of the country. Hours after the 19th Ebola patient died in Bundibugyo district, State Health Emmanuel Otaala highlighted fears of extremely contagious cholera, plague, meningitis and hepatitis outbreaks. "As we are trying to contain Ebola, we came across four other outbreaks," Otaala told reporters. The health ministry reported cholera in western Hoima and northeastern Nebbi districts; plague in Nebbi; meningitis in Nebbi...

Ebola outbreak spreading Kampala - The Ebola outbreak that has killed 18 people in western Uganda appears to be spreading, officials said on Sunday, as authorities examined a sample taken from a dead patient in the south of the country. Government officials told AFP that the disease, which flared in September, had spread to three new zones in the impoverished Bundibugyo district near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Virologists were meanwhile examining a sample taken from a suspected victim who died overnight in Mbarara region, 160km southeast of the affected district. Medics flee Health officials said several...

Associated Press GENEVA --A new form of the deadly Ebola virus has been detected in an outbreak in western Uganda that has so far killed 16 people, the World Health Organization said Friday. Tests conducted by a national lab in Uganda and confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that the virus belongs to a different subtype than the four already known, said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl. "We are very concerned about this because it does not present (symptoms) in exactly the same way as other Ebola strains," he said, adding that the new subtype appeared...

KAMPALA, Nov 29 (Reuters) - A haemorrhagic fever that has infected 51 people and killed 16 in Uganda since August has been confirmed to be the Ebola virus, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.

Nine cases of Ebola confirmed in DR Congo region KINSHASA (AFP) — Nine cases of Ebola virus have been confirmed in the West Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo that is at the epicentre of an outbreak that has killed at least 174 people, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official said Friday. "We have now nine cases of Ebola haemorrhagic fever confirmed in the laboratory, five cases of typhoid and one case of Shigella," WHO spokeswoman in DR Congo Cristiana Silvi told AFP. Symptoms of the epidemic -- high temperature, bloody diarrhoea, visible hemorrhaging -- were first seen...

Further cases of deadly Ebola virus confirmed in Congo Nine cases of the deadly Ebola virus were confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. The disease causes bleeding and fever and can prove fatal in 50 to 90 per cent of cases. It was identified last week in the province of Kasai Occidental. A major field operation had been launched by the country's Ministry of Health with the WHO calling on experts in disease control from as far afield as Canada and the United States. Work was underway to establish...

Congo's Ebola Outbreak Could Be Worst in Years By Craig Timberg Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, September 19, 2007; Page A19 JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 18 -- International medical personnel and supplies are being airlifted to a remote region of central Congo to combat what threatens to become the world's most serious outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in years.

ASSOCIATED PRESS KINSHASA, Congo – Lab results have confirmed a deadly illness outbreak in southeastern Congo as Ebola fever, officials said Monday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and another lab in Gabon confirmed the disease as a hemorrhagic fever, and specifically as Ebola, Health Minister Makwenge Kaput said on national television. More than 100 people have died of illness in the affected region since late August. Makwenge did not say whether the outbreak had been contained. Medical inspectors had previously said that people began dying after high-profile funerals of two village chiefs in the region...

March 15, 2007 — In 2003, a large suitcase containing the remains of 26 butchered monkeys was confiscated at Logan Airport in Boston on its way from Ghana. The 300 pounds of raw meat, destined to be served as the main course at a wedding in New Hampshire, was "oozing out of its container," said Tom Healy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. [snip]... Cane rat, monkey and bat are the bushmeats most often found being smuggled into the United States, and according to Jennifer McQuiston, a veterinarian at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Global...

Nearly three million Muslims from around the world, chanting “I am here, Lord” and raising their hands to heaven, marched through a desert valley outside Mecca in Saudi Arabia today on the first day of the annual hajj pilgrimage. Dressed in seamless white robes symbolising the equality of mankind under God, the pilgrims hiked through the eight-mile valley to Mina, starting a series of rituals in which they cleanse themselves of sin. This year’s hajj takes place amid increasing worries across the Islamic world - over the bloodshed in Iraq, violence in the Palestinian territories and a new war in...

"Ebola outbreaks kill 25% of world's gorillas" ""But the death toll is probably only a "small fraction" of gorillas likely to have been killed by Ebola in the past decade, it says."

An outbreak of Ebola virus in northwestern Republic of Congo has killed 5,000 gorillas, helping to push the threatened species even closer to extinction, a study says. The estimate is made by a team of scientists in Europe and central western Africa, who say there was a "massive die-off" of gorillas in Congo's Lossi Sanctuary park from 2002 to 2004. The great apes which died were western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), one of two gorillas species. The other species is the eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei). "The Lossi outbreak killed about as many gorillas as survive in the entire eastern gorillas species,"...

YET more evidence is in that the Ebola virus is spreading in a wave across Africa - putting the world's last big populations of lowland gorillas directly in its path. In 2003, an outbreak of Ebola struck gorillas living in the Congo. Bats in the area at that time were also carrying the virus, researchers recently discovered (New Scientist, 3 December 2005, p 20). That meant either the virus had always been lurking in bats, and spread to the gorillas, or that the bats were newly infected as the epidemic crossed their territory. Now researchers have found that the bat...

Researchers Discover Key Mechanism By Which Lethal Viruses Ebola And Marburg Cause Disease Researchers in the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Caribbean Primate Research Center have discovered a key mechanism by which the Filoviruses, Ebola and Marburg, cause disease. The identification of an amino acid sequence in Filoviruses that results in the rapid depression of immunological response is described in the December 2006 issue of The FASEB Journal. Using this information, researchers can begin to develop new drugs to stop these devastating diseases. Filoviruses,...

ATLANTA, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they have found the key mechanism by which the lethal viruses Ebola and Marburg viruses cause disease. The discovery by scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Columbia University and the Caribbean Primate Research Center is expected to lead to new drugs for treatment of certain viral hemorrhagic fevers in humans and apes. The researchers identified an amino acid sequence in Filoviruses that results in the rapid depression of immunological response. That information can be used to start development of new drugs to halt the devastating diseases. Filoviruses are...

Gorillas infecting each other with Ebola 17:00 10 July 2006 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie Lowland gorillas are catching the devastating Ebola virus not just from the virus's normal host, thought to be bats, but also from each other. So conclude Damien Caillaud and colleagues at the University of Rennes in France, who began watching 377 gorillas in Odzala National Park in Congo in 2001. "Maybe 30 are left now" of that original group, Caillaud told New Scientist.(There are other gorillas in the park that were not in the study group, which was defined by their use of the observation...

ANTANANARIVO, June 19 (Reuters) - The lethal Ebola virus could erupt in Paris or London because of the illicit trade in African wild meat which is following immigrant communities there, a leading expert said on Monday. Ebola and the deadly Marburg virus also infect wild primates such as apes and some studies suggest humans contract the disease while handling infected carcasses. The ultimate source is a mystery but evidence points to bats. "There is bushmeat going into places like Paris and London, being smuggled in for the immigrant market. So an Ebola outbreak could happen there," said Dr. Robert Swanepoel...

KILLER BUG AIR SCARE A WOMAN who arrived in London on a flight from Africa yesterday is reported to have died from the deadly and contagious ebola virus. Panic has spread among cabin crew and hospital staff after the death of the 38-year-old Briton. The unnamed woman is understood to work at an embassy in the African kingdom of Lesotho. Before boarding a Virgin Atlantic flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow she visited a doctor complaining of flu-like symptoms. She was allowed to fly, but during Flight VS602 to the UK she suffered a violent fit which left her unconscious. Cabin...

For the first time, an experimental vaccine against the deadly Marburg virus has been shown to work in monkeys even if the shot is not given until after the animals have been infected. The virus, closely related to Ebola, causes fever and severe hemorrhaging and can be fatal within a week. Epidemics of the disease have occurred in Angola and elsewhere in Africa. "Quite honestly, we were astonished," said Dr. Thomas W. Geisbert, a senior virologist at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., and an author of a study being published online...

What would happen if a world-renowned scientist and evolutionary ecologist told hundreds of his colleagues that 90 percent of the human race needed to be wiped out by exposure to Ebola or some other deadly virus? Apparently, according to a scientist who claims to have witnessed such a remarkable event one month ago, the fiend would get a standing ovation and an award. Forrest Mims III That's the story being told by Forrest Mims III, a member of the Texas Academy of Science, chairman of its environmental science section and editor of the Citizen Scientist.

AUSTIN, April 6, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Ebola, a form of hemorrhagic fever in which the internal organs of the victim liquefy, has one of the highest rates of fatality of any known contagious disease at approximately 80-90% and is one of the most contagious diseases known to medical science. It is also high on the list of possible bio-terror weapons of concern to international law enforcement and military security agencies. Tom Clancy’s thriller novel, Rainbow Six describes a group of radical environmentalists that wants to rid the world of people using a modified version of Ebola.All of which is...

Evil Texan wants to kill most humans Austin, Texas - Perhaps Homeland Security agents might want to take a break from cruising the net for young teen poon and take a look at Eric R. Pianka. The University of Texas Professor has grand schemes for wholesale liquidation of human populations that would dwarf the grandest ambitions of Stalin, Hilter and Mao combined, by using the Ebola virus. "Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine," Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward's University on Friday. Pianka's words are part of what he calls his...

If six billion humans died, the world would be a better place. That's the message a professor from the University of Texas is proclaiming. An article in The Gazette-Enterprise details Professor Eric Pianka's doomsday beliefs. "In his estimation, 'We've grown fat, apathetic and miserable,' all the while leaving the planet parched. The solution? A 90 percent reduction." Can anyone say "Thomas Malthus wannabe" (high school flashback: Malthus was the guy who said the earth's population would outgrow its food supply). Pianka tells the Gazette, "[Disease] will control the scourge of humanity. We're looking forward to a huge collapse." The professor...

Meeting Doctor Doom Forrest M. Mims III Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III. There is always something special about science meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal...

What would happen if a world-renowned scientist and evolutionary ecologist told hundreds of his colleagues that 90 percent of the human race needed to be wiped out by exposure to ebola or some other deadly virus? Apparently, according to a scientist who claims to have witnessed such a remarkable event one month ago, the fiend would get a standing ovation and an award. Forrest Mims III That's the story being told by Forrest Mims III, a member of the Texas Academy of Science, chairman of its environmental science section and editor of the Citizen Scientist. The speech Mims heard...