Science

NBC NEWS by Maggie Fox                                                                             Feb. 19, 2015

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is helping prepare for a new Ebola vaccine trial in Sierra Leone, the country that's now the worst hit by the Ebola epidemic.

The CDC will work with Sierra Leonean authorities to vaccinate up to 6,000 health care workers, including doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers, against a virus that's infected more than 11,000 people in Sierra Leone alone, killing 3,400 of them.

This trial will test just one of the Ebola vaccines in development - one designed by U.S. and Canadian government researchers with a company called New Link Genetics and licensed to Merck. It uses an animal virus called vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) to carry tiny pieces of the Ebola virus to help train the immune system to recognize it.

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http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/cdc-ready-vaccinate-6-000-against-ebola-sierra-leone-n308576

SCIENCE NEWS by Ashley Yaeger                               Feb. 14, 2015
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Genetic data are beginning to reveal how the Ebola virus causing the epidemic in Western Africa is evolving.

            LITTLE TWEAKS  A detailed look at genomes of the Ebola virus has pinpointed mutations that may make one type  of experimental therapy less effective. Cynthia Goldsmith/CDC

Scientists have deciphered the entire catalog of genetic data for 96 Ebola viruses taken from patients infected in 2014 during the first four months of the outbreak.

The results show that one particular clade, or type of the virus, is dominant among patients in Sierra Leone, suggesting that two other clades that dominated early on in the outbreak have died out.

This third clade appears to have evolved starting with a single mutation in the genetic catalog, or genome, of the virus, said Stephen Gire of Harvard University and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass. He presented the preliminary findings February 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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LIVESCIENCE.COM   by Rachael Rettner                                                                         Feb. 13, 2015

Doctors who take care of very sick Ebola patients may feel socially isolated, but surprisingly, they may not feel more stressed than usual, a new study from Germany suggests.

Researchers surveyed 46 health care workers who treated Germany's first Ebola patient in August 2014, as well as 40 health care workers who worked in the same hospital but did not treat the Ebola patient.

The researchers who did the study hypothesized that the people who treated the Ebola patient would have more symptoms of psychological distress because they were working in a challenging environment that presented a risk that they could become infected with the deadly virus.

CDC  EID JOURNAL                                              Feb. 12, 2015                                   
Study by Joseph Prescott, Trenton Bushmaker, Robert Fischer, Kerri Miazgowicz, Seth Judson, and Vincent J. Munster

The ongoing Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has highlighted questions regarding stability of the virus and detection of RNA from corpses. We used Ebola virus–infected macaques to model humans who died of Ebola virus disease.

Assessing the stability of corpse-associated virus and determining the most efficient sampling methods for diagnostics will clarify the safest practices for handling bodies and the best methods for determining whether a person has died of EVD and presents a risk for transmission. To facilitate diagnostic efforts, we studied nonhuman primates who died of EVD to examine stability of the virus within tissues and on body surfaces to determine the potential for transmission, and the presence of viral RNA associated with corpses.

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/21/5/15-0041_article