A review of Lydersen, Karl. The Ebola Explosion Discover January/February 2015 p.7-10 “The Ebola Explosion” is an article explaining what the ebola virus is and why it is so dangerous. The ebola virus is a virus that started in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and then died off and came back just recently even worse than before. It was mainly a problem in countries in Africa but in the past year several people were diagnosed with it in the US and other countries. It affects mostly humans but, scientists are not certain whether many other animals get the virus. They are confident that mice can spread the disease. Ebola is highly infectious where just a few particles of the virus in a drop of sweat or blood can cause disease. About
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Once inside the body the virus targets specific cell types, including liver cells, cells in the immune system, and endothelial cells, which line the inside of blood vessels. Inside the cell, the virus hijacks the cell’s own machinery to create more copies of itself. Often, this appropriation of the cell’s replication machinery comes at the expense of the cell being able to make all of its own needed machinery, leading to the death of the cell or at least an inability to function properly. One of the proteins made by the virus is called Ebola virus glycoprotein. The glycoprotein can disrupt cell adhesion, so that cells have trouble sticking to each other and to a scaffold called the extracellular matrix, which in healthy tissue helps to hold the cells …show more content…
Even after someone has died from it they still have some of the virus on them so anyone near them could get it. This is why when doctors are treating ebola patients they wear hazmat suits to protects their entire body. At least four Ebola drugs were being tested during early development of Ebola but all of them were ineffective. The first safety trial on an Ebola drug began in January 2014 for TKM- Ebola. This contains parts of RNA that target three genes essential to viral replication. This helped patients a bit but did not fully cure the virus. ZMapp is a cocktail of three antibodies that binds to Ebola, neutralizes it and alerts the immune system to the infection. This seemed like it would work but was not tested on humans as of the summer of 2014. When they did finally test it on two american missionary workers that had Ebola it helped them recover from Ebola after several weeks of intensive care. Doctors and nurses continued to use this drug and it was curing many people from Ebola but still many people were dying from it. It is very difficult to stop Ebola completely but, people can stop it better by diagnosing and treating infections and setting up labs on the ground to track emerging Ebola strains by sequencing their
Once inside the body the virus targets specific cell types, including liver cells, cells in the immune system, and endothelial cells, which line the inside of blood vessels. Inside the cell, the virus hijacks the cell’s own machinery to create more copies of itself. Often, this appropriation of the cell’s replication machinery comes at the expense of the cell being able to make all of its own needed machinery, leading to the death of the cell or at least an inability to function properly. One of the proteins made by the virus is called Ebola virus glycoprotein. The glycoprotein can disrupt cell adhesion, so that cells have trouble sticking to each other and to a scaffold called the extracellular matrix, which in healthy tissue helps to hold the cells …show more content…
Even after someone has died from it they still have some of the virus on them so anyone near them could get it. This is why when doctors are treating ebola patients they wear hazmat suits to protects their entire body. At least four Ebola drugs were being tested during early development of Ebola but all of them were ineffective. The first safety trial on an Ebola drug began in January 2014 for TKM- Ebola. This contains parts of RNA that target three genes essential to viral replication. This helped patients a bit but did not fully cure the virus. ZMapp is a cocktail of three antibodies that binds to Ebola, neutralizes it and alerts the immune system to the infection. This seemed like it would work but was not tested on humans as of the summer of 2014. When they did finally test it on two american missionary workers that had Ebola it helped them recover from Ebola after several weeks of intensive care. Doctors and nurses continued to use this drug and it was curing many people from Ebola but still many people were dying from it. It is very difficult to stop Ebola completely but, people can stop it better by diagnosing and treating infections and setting up labs on the ground to track emerging Ebola strains by sequencing their