Credit CDC PHIL
# 9022
Ian Mackay, in a follow up to his seminal post on Ebola ten days ago, writes today on the level of EBOV detection (often via RNA, or Antigens) in various human body fluids.
While the blood of viremic patients is infamously teeming with the virus, Ian describes the (somewhat limited) research to date on the level of EBOV detection in other body fluids – like tears, sweat and saliva.
Although the level of EBOV detection in these fluids have been far lower –and often even undetectable - given the believed low infectious dose for contracting viral hemorrhagic fevers and the likely variability of virus shedding across numerous cases, any hint of the virus in these body fluids is deserving of our attention and respect.
Follow the link to read.
Sunday, 31 August 2014
Ebola: Blood, sweat and tears...
This post follows up the recent one on convalescent semen being able to harbour infectious Ebola virus (EBOV; although I am not aware of any infection resulting from this route of transmission there has been at least one report for Marburg virus [4]).
I thought I'd give the same treatment to tears and sweat which are also fluids intermittently listed as possible sources of EBOV infection for humans. Some examples of the scientific literature which support the risk messaging, follow.
