Scientists at Boston University have observed a common pattern of immune response to Ebola in monkeys, which might enable doctors to treat infected people far earlier. There is currently no way to diagnose Ebola until the first symptom of the disease, a fever, appears, followed by severe headache and muscle pain arriving anywhere between two and 21 days after exposure.
Studying data from twelve monkeys exposed to Ebola, the Boston researchers in collaboration with a team at the United Stated Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases were able to observe a common immune response among those that became sick. Earlier detection of the disease would not only make quarantining people earlier easier, but treating people earlier also reduces the risk of more severe disease developing. "This opens up the possibility to develop a means to track the host response to infection and possibly be able to know if a person is sick before they actually get sick," says Emily Speranza, co-author on the paper.
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Ebola in humans tends to be contracted through cuts in the skin, or "through mucosal surfaces in your eyes, nose, or mouth," says Speranza. The team had been trying to simulate the course Ebola takes by injecting the disease directly into the primates' muscles, but decided to try mimicking human contraction more exactly through noses and with the use of less of the virus. They saw that the animals became sick (or, in two cases, not sick at all) over a greater spread of time – more similar to the varied course of human infection.
This marks the first time scientists have had a model of immune response similar to the way humans would become sick with the disease. Speranza looked at a group of signalling proteins called interferons: in all the monkeys, regardless of when they became sick following exposure, she found a group of genes triggered by these proteins four days before they came down with a fever. Comparing this to Ebola-infected human blood, she found the same genes going up and in a similar order. "We are very excited by the results of this study," Speranza says.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
