WHO update on Ebola virus 2:26
WHO update on Ebola virus 2:26
A McMaster researcher is calling for a new, potentially life-saving study of Ebola patients' blood, based on the idea that the deadly virus may also be safely immunizing scores of people.
Jonathan Dushoff, an associate professor of biology and an investigator with the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, is one of four researchers who published a letter in the latest edition of The Lancet medical journal calling for more blood tests to confirm the idea that many Ebola infections are asymptomatic.
That means people could be carrying the disease without experiencing any symptoms, and that in doing so they may have acquired immunity to the disease that could allow them to safely treat the sick.
"If it turns out that there are a lot of people out there that have had asymptomatic cases and are protected, they could be used," Dushoff told CBC Hamilton.
"It might be that a lot of these hospitals already have a large subpopulation of immune healthcare workers, and they should be the ones on the front lines," Dushoff said, adding the same could be true within families.
And, if the scientists are right, the projected estimates ("The estimates right now are all over the place," Dushoff said) of how many people will be sickened and die from the disease may be reduced, or at least refined.
Still, it remains unclear how many people have an asymptomatic Ebola infection. It's also unclear to what degree acquired immunity would protect them.
"There's no guarantee," Dushoff said.
"We think it's something that's worth trying and could help in the current outbreak depending on what the results are."
More blood needed
The scientists' letter maintains a "forceful" public health response to Ebola is needed right now, but they're hoping someone on the ground in West Africa will begin collecting more blood.
Currently, the scientists' idea is based on an analysis of one post-Ebola outbreak group of blood samples evaluated specifically for antibodies that showed 71 per cent of "seropositive" individuals did not have the disease.
It's possible a percentage of those people have protective immunity against the disease.
Dushoff, who specializes in mathematical modeling, said it's reasonably easy to see in people's blood who has mounted an immune response to Ebola during an asymptomatic infection.
It gets complicated, he said, to know whether people are protected.
"We want to observe. We want to get blood from people on the frontlines now, because watching which one of those gets sick is going to help provide information about who's protected," Dushoff said.
Figuring out who has an asymptomatic infection could be done in days, he said. Finding out who has acquired immunity takes longer, but is possible to know within weeks.
"The fact that there's an outbreak going on gives you a chance to figure out whether some people are protected."
The problem, he said, is that "you can't just watch people." Ebola is supposed to be fairly easy to prevent, so while it would be helpful for researchers to watch people they believe have acquired immunity, researchers also need to do everything possible to keep that person from contracting the disease.
Research community focused on 'emergency'
It's not clear who would collect the blood samples for Dushoff's research, but he said he's "hopeful" that even though resources in Ebola-ravaged countries like Liberia someone will help out.
One logical partner, the group points out in the Lancet letter, would be the groups studying the possibility of treating Ebola patients with blood transfusions from those who have survived the disease (a popular idea during the 1995 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.)
"The point of pushing the paper out now is that it could help very soon," Dushoff said, adding the global concern about Ebola has forced the research community to act.
"The fact that it's happening so quickly made me push it to the top of my priority list," Dushoff said.
Journals, collaborators and other organizations have also begun working faster.
"People are treating Ebola as an emergency," he said.
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