www.thelancet.com Published online December 22, 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32618-6 1 Since the discovery of Ebola virus in 1976, researchers have attempted to develop eff ective vaccines. Early eff orts were largely stalled as a result of the small global market for a vaccine for Ebola virus disease because of an absence of fi nancial incentives for pharmaceutical companies. A...

Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a severe infection with an extremely high fatality rate spread through direct contact with body fluids. A promising Ebola vaccine (rVSV-ZEBOV) may soon become universally available. We constructed a game-theoretic model of Ebola incorporating individual decisions to vaccinate. We found that if a population adopts selfishly optimal vaccination strategies, then the po...

Infection with Ebola virus causes a severe disease accompanied by high mortality rates, and there are no licensed vaccines or therapies available for human use. Filovirus vaccine research efforts still need to determine the roles of humoral and cell-mediated immune responses in protection from Ebola virus infection. Previous studies indicated that exposure to Ebola virus proteins expressed from...

Cases of Ebola that have turned up in Dallas and New York City have prompted calls for a travel ban to prohibit travelers from Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea from entering the US during the ongoing Ebola outbreak. But travel bans have not worked in past epidemics and will not stop Ebola from spreading. Banning travel would slow the movement of people and goods to those countries, harm the in...

On December 18, 2014, the Guinea Ministry of Health was notified by local public health authorities in Kissidougou, a prefecture in southeastern Guinea (pop. 284,000), that the number of cases of Ebola virus disease (Ebola) had increased from one case reported during December 8-14, 2014, to 62 cases reported during December 15-21. Kissidougou is one of the four Guinea prefectures (the others ar...

On March 20, 2015, a case of Ebola virus disease was identified in Liberia that most likely was transmitted through sexual contact. We assessed the efficiency of detecting Ebola virus in semen samples by molecular diagnostics and the stability of Ebola virus in ex vivo semen under simulated tropical conditions.

Ebola virus is known to persist in semen of male survivors of Ebola virus disease (EVD). However, maximum duration of, or risk factors for, virus persistence are unknown. We report an EVD survivor with preexisting HIV infection, whose semen was positive for Ebola virus RNA 565 days after recovery from EVD.

The 2014 Ebola epidemic is the largest to date. There is no cure or treatment for this deadly disease; therefore there is an urgent need to develop new diagnostics to accurately detect Ebola. Current RT-PCR assays lack sensitive and reliable positive controls. To address this critical need, we devised a bio-inspired positive control for use in RT-PCR diagnostics: we encapsulated scrambled Ebola...

that occurred in difficult to reach rural settings, the 2014–2016 West Africa Ebola epidemic involved major urban areas and thereby increased the potential to escalate from a regional epidemic to a pandemic. The West Africa Ebola outbreak was unprecedented in its scope, resulting in 28,616 reported cases and 11,300 deaths among adults and children. In all, Ebola cases were treated in 10 differe...

Ebola virus causes sporadic outbreaks of lethal hemorrhagic fever in humans, but there is no currently approved therapy. Cells take up Ebola virus by macropinocytosis, followed by trafficking through endosomal vesicles. However, few factors controlling endosomal virus movement are known. Here we find that Ebola virus entry into host cells requires the endosomal calcium channels called two-pore ...