Study Reveals Ebola Virus Can Hide in Brain, Persist Even Years After Treatment
Published:14 Feb.2022 Source:US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
Some recent Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Africa have been linked to persistent infection in patients who had survived previous outbreaks, according to the paper's senior author, Xiankun (Kevin) Zeng, Ph.D. In particular, the 2021 outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Guinea re-emerged from a persistently infected survivor of the previous major outbreak at least five years ago. However, the exact "hiding place" of persistent Ebola virus and the underlying pathology of subsequent recrudescent, or recurring, disease in survivors -- especially those treated with standard-of-care monoclonal antibody therapeutics -- were largely unknown. So Zeng and his team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases used a nonhuman primate model, the one that most closely recapitulates Ebola virus disease in humans, to address these questions.
“Ours is the first study to reveal the hiding place of brain Ebola virus persistence and the pathology causing subsequent fatal recrudescent Ebola virus-related disease in the nonhuman primate model,” Zeng explained. “We found that about 20 percent of monkeys that survived lethal Ebola virus exposure after treatment with monoclonal antibody therapeutics still had persistent Ebola virus infection -- specifically in the brain ventricular system, in which cerebrospinal fluid is produced, circulated, and contained -- even when Ebola virus was cleared from all other organs.”