Ebola virus

Question 1

Marburg haemorrhagic fever

Answer 1

First filovirus to be identified

Laboratory workers infected from African green monkeys imported from Uganda (1967)

Question 2

Filoviruses

Answer 2

3 Genera. Marburgvirus, Ebolavirus, Cuevavirus

5 subspecies of ebolavirus (Zaire, Bundibugyo, Tai forest, Sudan, Reston)

Question 3

Zaire and Sudan ebolavirus

Answer 3

Simultaneous outbreaks in 1976
Spread by use of contaminated needles
Serologically different to Marburg virus (different antibodies)

Question 4

Bundibugyo ebolavirus

Answer 4

Outbreak in western Uganda, 2007

37 deaths

Question 5

Tai forest ebolavirus

Answer 5

Isolated from ethnologist in 1994
Infected while performing necropsy on dead chimpanzee
Second seroconversion in Liberia (only two individual cases)

Question 6

Reston ebolavirus

Answer 6

High mortality in macaques shipped from Philippines

4 humans seroconverted, no disease

Question 7

Ebolavirus

Answer 7

First case from contact with bushmeat (zoonosis)
Transmission between humans is by close contact
Chains of infection are short (severe and obvious symptoms)

Question 8

Ebola human transmission

Answer 8

Injuries and skin abrasions
Contact with infected blood or body fluids
Contact with contaminated objects (syringes)
No insect, water, food or aerosol transmission

Question 9

Ebolavirus features

Answer 9

Fever, headache, diarrhoea are early symptoms
Rash, haemorrhage, convulsions at peak illness
Diffuse coagulopathy
Tissue factor released from infected macrophages may induce coagulation irregularities
Massive loss of blood

Question 10

Ebolavirus vaccine

Answer 10

rVSV-ZEBOV
Ebola glycoprotein GP expressed in Vesicular Stromatitis Virus (VSV) and replaces G in the VSV genome
VSV does not cause disease in humans

Question 11

Passive vaccine

Answer 11

Zmapp and REGN-EB3
Raised in mice immunised with virus-like particles
Chimerised into human IgG1 scaffold
Protects non-human primates