Guinea

massgeneral.org - August 27, 2015

While most primary care physicians responding to a survey taken in late 2014 and early 2015 expressed confidence in their ability to identify potential cases of Ebola and communicate Ebola risks to their patients, only 50 to 70 percent of them gave answers that fit with CDC guidelines when asked how they would care for hypothetical patients who might have been exposed to Ebola. In addition, those who were least likely to encounter an Ebola patient – based on their location and characteristics of their patients – were most likely to choose overly intense management of patients actually at low risk.  The results of the survey, conducted by a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators, have been published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

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CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Ebola Risk and Preparedness: A National Survey of Internists 

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Identification of agents effective against multiple toxins and viruses by host-oriented cell targeting

prweb.com - by Cynthia Lujan - September 1, 2015

A new host-based therapy for Ebola, anthrax and other deadly infectious diseases has been discovered by researchers at the Keck Graduate Institute and its collaborators. The discovery has the potential to speed to market treatments for previously untreatable diseases.

The findings were published online on August 27 by Scientific Reports, an open access research journal from the publishers of Nature.

The lead authors of the story were Leoor Zilberminitz and William Leonardi, doctoral students in KGI laboratory of assistant professor Mikhail Martchenko. The researchers screened a library of 1,581 drugs previously approved by the FDA for in vitro protection of mammalian cells against Bacillus anthracis lethal toxin and diphtheria toxin, which normally kill 50-70% of unprotected cells. They then investigated the 1% most promising compounds that both provided the best protection against the two toxins and were not toxic to uninfected cells.

EUREKEALERT                                                                                                               Aug. 25, 2015
PITTSBURGH--The historic outbreak of Ebola virus disease in West Africa that began in March 2014 and has killed more than 11,000 people since, has raised new questions about the resilience of the virus and tested scientists' understanding of how to contain it. The latest discovery by a group of microbial risk-assessment and virology researchers suggests that the procedures for disposal of Ebola-contaminated liquid waste might underestimate the virus' ability to survive in wastewater.

Current epidemic response procedures from both the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advise that after a period of days, Ebola-contaminated liquid can be disposed of directly into a sewage system without additional treatment.

However, new data recently published by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, Drexel University, and the National Institutes of Health indicate that Ebola can survive in detectable concentrations in wastewater for at least a week or longer.

Read complete story.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/uop-pda082515.php

THE LANCET by Kate Zinszer and others.                   Aug. 24,2015

In a speed outpacing control efforts, the Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic in parts of west Africa spread across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone infecting an estimated 26 800 individuals and claiming more than 11 000 lives as of May 15, 2015.¹ Mobile populations coupled with porous borders^{1, 2} and commercial air travel patterns³ affected the frequency and breadth of Ebola virus transmission.