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Detection of Viral RNA in Tissues following Plasma Clearance from an Ebola Virus Infected Patient

Biava, M; Caglioti, C; Bordi, L; Castilletti, C; Colavita, F; Quartu, S; Nicastri, E; ... Lalle, E; + view all (2017) Detection of Viral RNA in Tissues following Plasma Clearance from an Ebola Virus Infected Patient. PLoS Pathogens , 13 (1) , Article e1006065. 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006065. Green open access

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Abstract

An unprecedented Ebola virus (EBOV) epidemic occurred in 2013–2016 in West Africa. Over this time the epidemic exponentially grew and moved to Europe and North America, with several imported cases and many Health Care Workers (HCW) infected. Better understanding of EBOV infection patterns in different body compartments is mandatory to develop new countermeasures, as well as to fully comprehend the pathways of human-to-human transmission. We have longitudinally explored the persistence of EBOV-specific negative sense genomic RNA (neg-RNA) and the presence of positive sense RNA (pos-RNA), including both replication intermediate (antigenomic-RNA) and messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules, in the upper and lower respiratory tract, as compared to plasma, in a HCW infected with EBOV in Sierra Leone, who was hospitalized in the high isolation facility of the National Institute for Infectious Diseases “Lazzaro Spallanzani” (INMI), Rome, Italy. We observed persistence of pos-RNA and neg-RNAs in longitudinally collected specimens of the lower respiratory tract, even after viral clearance from plasma, suggesting possible local replication. The purpose of the present study is to enhance the knowledge on the biological features of EBOV that can contribute to the human-to-human transmissibility and to develop effective intervention strategies. However, further investigation is needed in order to better understand the clinical meaning of viral replication and shedding in the respiratory tract.

Type: Article
Title: Detection of Viral RNA in Tissues following Plasma Clearance from an Ebola Virus Infected Patient
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006065
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006065
Language: English
Additional information: © 2017 Biava et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Infection and Immunity
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1545054
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