Ebola virus outbreak in Africa

[Camilla Cracchiolo]

Miranda T Dooley (dool0008 at gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:
: Ian A. York (york at mbcrr.dfci.harvard.edu) wrote:
: : In article <3p2a1f$8uu at eplet.mira.net.au> proff at suburbia.apana.org.au (Julian Assange) writes:
: (snip)
: : However, in (for example) Dengue, pre-exposure to one strain may
: : actually make an infection with a second strain worse.  --

: can you explain this? i've heard of some infections making subsequent 
: ones worse, but what are the mechanics?

It's not completely understood how this happens but Laurie Garrett talks 
about this in _The Coming Plague_.  It seems that some strains of dengue 
have the ability to take over the macrophages that engulf them.  
Macrophages are a type of white blood cell that engulf invaders and 
presents them to T-cells to decide if they are foreign or not.  For some 
reason, if you've got antibodies to one strain of dengue, certain other 
strains can take over some of the T-cells and neutralize the immune 
response to the virus.  Nasty stuff.

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           Camilla Cracchiolo, RN   camilla at primenet.com

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