Hope for fighting disease known as Ebola of frogs

Date:  February 15, 2019

Source:  University of Central Florida

Despite widespread infection, some frog populations are surviving a deadly disease that is the equivalent of humankind's Ebola virus. The reason -- genetic diversity.

That's the finding of a new study published this week in the journal Immunogenetics. Anna Savage, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Central Florida, is the lead author of the study.

The research is important because frogs are facing what may be a mass extinction as a result of disease, Savage says.

"If you have more genetic variation, you have more potential to respond and adapt to anything," Savage says.

However, protecting frog habitats from destruction and pollution is critical, she says.

"Don't destroy habitats, maintain large population sizes -- these simple things are the best actions to implement, given whatever limited information we have, to give populations the chance to rebound," she says.

Continued

Could we predict the next Ebola outbreak by tracking the migratory patterns of bats?

Lehigh University researchers' framework tracks the ecological drivers of bat migration patterns to predict the next Ebola outbreak

Date: May 22, 2018

Source: Lehigh University

Javier Buceta, associate professor of bioengineering, Paolo Bocchini, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and postdoctoral student Graziano Fiorillo of Lehigh University have created a modeling framework that takes a zoonotic perspective on Ebola.

The team's approach works by tracking the migratory patterns of bats, which are believed to be a main carrier of the Ebola virus. Bats, in this instance, are the reservoirs of Ebola. This means that they are carriers and transmitters of the virus, though it does not cause them harm.

"In our model, the appearance of outbreaks is tightly linked to fluctuations in environmental conditions which have an impact on both bat migration patterns and infection rates," says Buceta.

Buceta, Bocchini and Fiorillo worked with satellite information and parameter sampling techniques to create their framework, which integrates data and modeling to predict the conditions linking bats' behavior with the outbreak of Ebola. They have detailed their work in a paper titled "A Predictive Spatial Distribution Framework for Filovirus-Infected Bats" published online today in Scientific Reports.

Continued  

Over 20 countries environmentally suitable for Ebola transmission by bats

New study expands on previous Ebola findings, launches new interactive data tool

Date: July 14, 2016

Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

Though the West African Ebola outbreak that began in 2013 is now under control, 23 countries remain environmentally suitable for animal-to-human transmission of the Ebola virus. Only seven of these countries have experienced cases of Ebola, leaving the remaining 16 countries potentially unaware of regions of suitability, and therefore underprepared for future outbreaks.

These findings come from a new study published in the journaleLife titled "Updates to the zoonotic niche map of Ebola virus disease." The paper was led by researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Only a handful of countries saw cases of Ebola before 2013, until Guinea unexpectedly reported an outbreak that led to more than 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths across West Africa. The current eLife study provides an update on a study published in 2014 that created a zoonotic niche map used to define areas of environmental suitability for Ebola in response to the outbreak. This map identified regions where the virus could be transmitted from animals to humans. The updated map published today incorporates more species of bats likely capable of transmitting Ebola, as well as new reports of the virus.

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Monitoring Ebola in wild great apes -- using poop

Date:

September 18, 2014

Source:

Wildlife Conservation Society

Summary:

A group of international scientists has developed a new method to study Ebola virus in wildlife. The new methodology exploits the fact that, like humans, apes surviving viral infections develop antibodies against them. Typically, those antibodies are measured in the blood. The scientists, however, developed a laboratory technique that can isolate antibodies from ape feces.

Read on ...

Health Experts Narrow the Hunt for Ebola

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2012) — Response efforts to outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Africa can benefit from a standardized sampling strategy that focuses on the carcasses of gorillas, chimpanzees, and other species known to succumb to the virus, according to a consortium of wildlife health experts.

In a recently published study of 14 previous human Ebola outbreaks and the responses of wildlife teams collecting animal samples, the authors of the new study conclude that most efforts to collect samples from live animals (i.e. rodents, bats, primates, birds) failed to isolate Ebola virus or antibodies. However, they found that collecting samples from animal carcasses during outbreaks was a more effective method for Ebola detection. The early detection of Ebola in animal populations near a human outbreak is crucial for learning more about this virus, which can strike human populations with a mortality rate of more than 80 percent.

"You can't test every single animal, so we used information from historical outbreaks to figure out how to help the field response team focus their effort," according to Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) wildlife epidemiologist Sarah Olson, the lead author of the new report. "It turns out that carcass sampling yields a 50 percent chance of finding Ebola virus or antibodies compared to less than six percent when sampling free-ranging live animals."

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120516140107.htm