Ebola Virus Update: Disease Found Hiding In The Lungs Of Health Care Worker [STUDY]

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Ebola virus disease (EVD), also known simply as Ebola is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, which manifests between two days and three weeks after contracting the virus. Its symptoms include, fever, muscular pain, sore throat, headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, rash with decreased function of the liver and kidneys.

At this time, infected persons will begin to bleed both internally and externally. The disease kills between 25 and 90 percent of those infected due to low blood pressure from fluid loss which typically follows six to sixteen days after symptoms appear.

In a number of cases the virus has been found in the eyes, amniotic fluid, semen, placenta, breast milk and central nervous system, were an infected person is thought to be treated and cure. A recent study has now suggests a new hiding place for the virus.

A study has found potential evidence of Ebola virus replication in the lungs of a person thought to be cured and recovering from the disease.

The study was conducted on a health care worker who was infected in Sierra Leone and moved to a hospital in Rome for treatment. The doctors were surprised to find that after the virus had been cleared from the blood plasma, it could still be found in the lower respiratory tract.

West Africa experienced an outbreak of Ebola from 2013 to 2016. Previous studies in the lab, animals and observations of evacuated patients treated in Europe and the United States have suggested that the virus could cause damage to the lungs by replicating the virus in lung tissue. But that there had been no direct evidence of lung infection until now, study author, Giuseppe Ippolito of Italy's National Institute for Infectious Disease said.

To understand how the lungs might be affected by the Ebola virus, Ippolito and his colleagues tracked the presence of Ebola virus genetic material in the lungs and blood of the aforementioned healthcare worker during treatment and recovery.

The researchers monitored the patient's lung levels of viral RNA fragments known to be associated with Ebola replication and compared it with the viral RNA levels in the blood. They discovered the viral RNA and viral replication markers in the lungs for five days after virus was cleared from the blood, according to Washington Post.

If these findings are confirmed, it means that new ways of controlling the disease and monitoring survivors may be needed and also possible new treatments. The results suggest that Ebola virus may have been replicating in the lungs which suggests a major role of the respiratory tissues in the pathogenesis of EVD.

 But it is also possible that the lung simply provides a protective environment that allows RNA to stay longer than it did in the blood. The researchers noted that the presence of RNA for total and replication markers in the lungs suggests the possibility of active replication, according to Eurek Alert.

However, further studies are required for better understanding of the correlation between lung infection and Ebola virus disease and whether it could be a factor in the transmission Ebola.

The researchers published their findings in the journal PLOS Pathogens.