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turtledove
2015 May 8, 9:58am
Tests showed the fluid in his left eye had live Ebola virus.
This is a little frightening.... It's no longer live in his blood, but it is live in other organs.
They suggest further studies are now warranted to check for the presence of the virus in other "immune privileged" sites such as the central nervous system, testicles and cartilage.
Testicles would seem to be an area for concern. Furthermore if it lives in other organs/tissue... could there be rebound diseases later in life (kind of like chicken pox and shingles)?
curious2
2015 May 8, 10:23am
This week, Frontline broadcast an excellent report on the Ebola Outbreak. They concluded that the epidemic had ended primarily because local people in the affected countries changed their behavior, specifically reducing contact with sick and dead people. The highly publicized western interventions would not have worked, and ended up making little difference. (A British nurse said his hospital should have been shut down months before it was, and two French volunteers criticized useless WHO meetings with unqualified staff and government trying to suppress publication of the numbers in order to protect business interests. In my opinion, hospitals quarantining together everybody with Ebola symptoms also probably spread Ebola to people whose symptoms have resulted from flu or something else, not Ebola.) In the early part of the epidemic, primitive people thought it was witchcraft or a curse, and turned to witch doctors and healers. One popular healer got Ebola, and her funeral preparations were a particular disaster, because people came from surrounding villages to touch the corpse, then traveled far and wide with Ebola. Eventually, more people got the message that it was a virus, specifically Ebola, and changed their behavior to stop spreading it.
In my opinion, the best the west can do is provide information, e.g. YouTube videos to explain how to care for and bury people; you can lead the horses to water, but it's not a great idea to fly over there and try to make them drink. I felt some frustration with pseudo-heroic American medical professionals, basically disaster tourists, who wanted to fly over there for a couple of weeks, then fly back here to get congratulated by their peers and Facebook friends, abandoning the patients in the middle of the epidemic. If their highest priority had been to help, they'd have stayed for the duration, or maybe helped people closer to home instead of flying to where the TV cameras were. YouTube training videos might have saved many lives, without the risks of bringing back Ebola. That is a controversial opinion though, which I have learned not to express IRL to people who might choose to misconstrue it for their own purposes. (As PatNet readers have observed, even disagreeing with Obamneycare results in being called racist for some reason, I guess because the second guy who signed it was black. I happen to have opposed the same plan when it was signed by Romney, and pushed by Hillary Clinton, and they're both white, but whatever.)
The Ebola virus has been detected in the eye of a US doctor who had already recovered from the illness.
The medic, who caught the bug while working in Sierra Leone, had blurred eyesight and pain two months after being declared Ebola-free.
Scientists say his eye infection presents no risk to the public.
But reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine they warn that research is needed to see if Ebola can also linger in other parts of the body.
Inflammatory reaction
Patients with Ebola are generally discharged once tests show the virus is no longer present in blood. At this point, experts say, it cannot be spread to members of the general public.
But there have been suggestions the virus could live on in certain bodily fluids - for example in the semen of survivors some weeks after recovery.
Now a team, including scientists from Emory University School of Medicine, say it could also persist in the eye and lead to further damage.
Their 43-year-old patient recovered from a serious Ebola infection that needed weeks of intensive care.
But shortly after being discharged, he had a burning sensation in his eyes and suffered worsening blurry vision.
Tests showed the fluid in his left eye had live Ebola virus.
And doctors say there was widespread inflammation in his eye which can lead to blindness.
But after three months of treatment with steroids and antiviral drugs, his vision began to improve.
Experts think the virus's staying power might be due to the eye's ability to tolerate certain pathogens once inside its walls.
They suggest further studies are now warranted to check for the the presence of the virus in other "immune privileged" sites such as the central nervous system, testicles and cartilage.
And doctors are calling for more help for survivors in the worst-affected countries. Recovering patients are reporting eye problems among other difficulties.
But eye specialists are in short supply in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
Dr Russell Van Gelder, of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, said: "This remarkable case now demonstrates that the virus can remain viable in ocular fluids long after the patient has recovered from the systemic infection.
"If the Ebola epidemic continues, ophthalmologists throughout the world will be seeing patients with post-Ebola uveitis (inflammation), and will need to recognise and treat this condition.
"However, I want to emphasise that as far as we know, the Ebola virus is not transmitted by casual contact.
"The current study does not suggest that infection can be transmitted through contact with tears of patients who have recovered from their initial infection."
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32657358
#ebola