ebola spreading?

[Marcel Schouwenburg]

On 15-MAY-1995 13:36, mremingt at umabnet.ab.umd.edu, wrote:

> The reservoir for this virus is puzzling.  Just the fact that ~ 15-20 
> years has elapsed between outbreaks is curious.  I understand that no 
> antibodies to Ebola were found in the bats.  Perhaps there is a 
> climatological factor involved in the diseases' re-emergence.  Also many 
> of the hemophoragic viruses are insect borne.  Any other thoughts?  Mary

In fact there was a bat found to have antibodies against Ebola, but this was
not at the time of the outbreak in the 70's. I don't recall the details
because I have the references at home, but the positive bat was found later
when a group of scientists went back to Africa to search for the reservoir.
More interesting, I think, was that when the search was extended to Cameroon,
a group of pygmees living in the area was found to have antibodies against
Ebola (About 15 percent of the group.).
The pygmees helped the scientists (including a Belgian virologist) to
capture all kinds of animals for testing. None of these animals where found
to have antibodies against Ebola.

BTW: A 'field test' for Ebola-antibodies was developped in the 70's. They
used a fluorescense technique.

Next time I will provide my references as it should be done when a posting
is made.


Marcel

 "Mendel had no academic grade or what so ever, but he was a great help to
  sciense. So don't bother if you don't have a B.Sc., M.Sc. or whatever."
                       "mens sana in corpore sano"
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Marcel Schouwenburg             | Besides working as a Radiation Safety     |
| Health Physics Department       | Officer, I'm a student in both            |
| Interfaculty Reactor Institute  | Nutritional Toxicology and Virology.      |
| Delft University of Technology  | Faculty of Natural Sciences               |
| The Netherlands                 | Open university, The Netherlands          |
|                                                                             |
|    "All reflections/opinions made are on personal name and are not          |
|     connected to above mentioned universities unless otherwise stated."     |
|                                                                             |
 -------------------< e-mail: schouwen at iri.tudelft.nl >-----------------------
- end -