Monday, July 23, 2018

Just One More Thing...






3 comments:

Night driver said...

I understand this doesn't REALLY fit here but I have no direct e-mail for you (or the vicodin has dulled my recognition of same)

https://www.wral.com/for-the-first-time-a-female-ebola-survivor-infects-others/17716292/

Excerpt"

For the First Time, a Female Ebola Survivor Infects Others
Posted 6:48 p.m. yesterday


By Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times

For the first time, scientists have found evidence that a woman can harbor the Ebola virus for more than a year and then infect others.

The discovery involved transmission within a Liberian family in the closing days of the West African epidemic that lasted from December 2014 to mid-2016. More than 28,600 people were infected and 11,325 died.

The episode raises new medical questions: Scientists do not know how the virus hid inside the woman for 13 months before re-emerging in lethal form.

However, because she fell ill soon after giving birth, experts believe the immune suppression that normally occurs in pregnancy may have triggered a relapse.

The case, published Monday by Lancet Infectious Diseases, also worries experts because fear of Ebola survivors and discrimination against them persists in Africa, and the notion that a female survivor can pass on the virus could worsen that.

In the past, although bits of virus have been found in the breast milk and spinal fluid of women who recover, only male survivors have been shown to infect anyone. Those transmissions were through sex — the virus is known to persist in semen for two years.

The family cluster came to light in November 2015, six months after Liberia had declared its outbreak over — prematurely, it turned out.
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Housecarl at www.timebomb2000.com is one of THE best news hounds (with LEGIT sources) I've found over the last 20 years. He brought this to us.

Thought you should see this. Feel free to chuck it or use it as this month's Ebola seed.

Chuck Rienzo [night driver from TB2K] chuck.rienzo@gmail.com.

Aesop said...

Thanks for that one, I'll dig into it.

My recollections was that numerous survivors were found to still be harboring active virus months to years later, at last report, and the reality is that they may never actually be virus-free.

We're still only at the 4-years-post-outbreak mark now.

The biggest news from the 2014 outbreak was that a massive outbreak also gave us, finally, a larger Ebola survivor pool to study. Unfortunately survival sequellae may be as bad or worse than outright death, including being "Typhoid Mary" forever.

Night driver said...

Up util this female they have all been male survivors who had "fragments" of the virus in semen for 3 then 6 then 12 months. Yes there were female survivors, nobody caught them with fragments IIRC not even in breast milk.


("Fragments" ~~~snicker~~ Like you need more than a good sized piece of a virus to pass on the disease.......have yet to see any studies that show how small a virus piece passes on the disease. MAYBE with a working vax some brave soul will get that done. I'd HATE to sit on the IRB or IEC for that one!)