Ebola Patient Zero Identified, Probably Infected By Bats 112
BarbaraHudson writes The CBC is reporting that scientists have possibly found the source of Patient Zero's Ebola infection. From the story: "Patient Zero, two-year-old Guinean Emile Ouamouno, may have been infected while hunting or playing with bats inside a hollow tree near his home in a small village named Meliandou. The study determined Ouamouno's interaction with bats is the likely cause of transmission by ruling out other possibilities, namely that the virus was spread by the consumption of bushmeat. Only children and women presented symptoms or died in the beginning of the current epidemic. Research published in the EMBO Molecular Medicine journal finds that the single transmission, from bat to boy, was then spread human to human."
Re: Kids just have to fuck everything up (Score:1)
Fact 1: Most serial killers strike as adults.
Fact 2: We are talking about children here.
Conclusion: Your argument is invalid.
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I've checked the statistics. You're still a racist.
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Oops, that was meant for parent.
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Sounds like the parent's job to make sure a kid isn't fucking with bats, you racist twat.
Racism aside, sexual intercourse with small flying mammals should be actively discouraged, regardless of age.
Re:Finger pointer??? WTF???? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not finger pointing. Knowing who your patient zero was is absolutely vital if you want to be able to reduce the likelihood of future outbreaks.
Ebola doesn't have a natural reservoir in the human population; it's too fast-acting and (with the exception of the Reston strain) deadly for that. It tends to have a similar effect on other primates as well. So identifying where the disease does live between outbreaks in the human population (likely in a species which experiences no or limited symptoms from infection) is critical, both for research purposes (the ability to keep an eye on the virus before its latest strain jumps into humans) or for educating people as to which particular pools of the animal population to stay away from.
If you go back through medical history - right back to bubonic plague having a natural reservoir in rats' fleas - identifying how a virus has been making the jump into humans has been the first stage in controlling it.
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Still, we try.
Is that few enough for ya? ;)
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The five people who modded him informative, and the thousands who will read his comment because of that, probably care.
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If you go back through medical history - right back to bubonic plague having a natural reservoir in rats' fleas - identifying how a virus has been making the jump into humans has been the first stage in controlling it.
Yersinia pestis is a bacteria, not a virus. But yes, identifying patient zero is quite important to fighting any disease.
The other thing you should probably have corrected the GP about is that we are not in a position to start any kind of wide-scale immunization program against Ebola, since we don't have a proven vaccine for it yet. It's not like scientists are holding out: we just don't have one.
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Standard procedure for finding a treatment for a new strain of infectious disease is to find the source of the outbreak.
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Standard procedure for making a new post on slashdot is to criticize wildly based on the summary so someone else explains the article to you.
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depends on what you mean by "hunting"
is kid Mobile??
does kid understand MINE! ?
can kid grab stuff in his/her hands??
if Yes to all three then yes the Play type hunting is possible
(also i would not want to face a 2 year old Major Feline)
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Just like you never hear about rabies problem of bats either. Just the dogs and humans.
Which is typically sourced from bats.
Re:What's odd is that (Score:4, Informative)
The bats aren't as sensitive to Ebola as humans. Probably because they have had this disease among them for a long time.
The Black Death during medieval times was worst the first time around, the second and third time it wasn't as deadly because the survivors from the first hit had the opportunity to spread their genes while those that perished obviously hadn't.
And it's still not entirely clear if Black Death really was Yersina Pestis or something else.
In any case - as long as a disease don't have 100% lethality there will be survivors with better genes improving the genetic stock.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah laymen's evolution theory at its finest ...
There several ways to survive a plague:
a) don't catch the disease, we don't know if that was genetic or luck, likely no influence on 'breeding'
b) catching the disease, surviving by good nutrition and other lucky cases, no influence on breeding
c) catching the disease, surviving by 'stronger' immune system. Now if the survivor is young enough, he may breed and spread his 'I survived the plague' gene. On the other hand he might be to old, never breed or if he doe
Re:What's odd is that (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, and how exactly do you imagine evolution works? It's just random mutation and not-quite-so-random death. If you have an advantage that delays your death, but don't breed during the respite, then you are irrelevant to that aspect of evolution. But that's very rare - sex is typically a lifelong interest, and males remain fertile indefinitely while humans and orcas are the only known mammals where the females eventually become infertile. Pretty much everything else breeds until death. If you have a trait that reduces your interest in sex, then it will almost certainly be bred out of the population - unless it's genetically linked to something that provides a corresponding advantage to yourself or your close relatives. The selective pressure will obviously be less on age-related changes, which won't start manifesting until most of your breeding opportunities are behind you.
Basically, we don't need to know why someone survived a plague - it's enough that they did: there will be at least a slightly higher concentration of "useful" genes for surviving the disease among the survivors than there was originally, and thus almost certainly a greater concentration of those genes in the next generation. After the same basic species of disease sweeps through a population a few thousand times pretty much everyone still surviving will have many disease-resistant genes.
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If you have an advantage that delays your death, but don't breed during the respite, then you are irrelevant to that aspect of evolution.
Not if you helped your kids in that time.
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sex is typically a lifelong interest, and males remain fertile indefinitely
Uh, you do know that before viagra, human males' penises stopped working when they got old, right?
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Check out Strong Spermin' [wikipedia.org] ^H^H^H^H Strom Thurmond. He popped out 4 kids between the ages of 68 and 73.
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Penises don't stop working ... other diseases prevent you perhaps.
Main reson for those: lack of sports/fitness, to much alcohol, wrong nutrition, illnesses related to that like heart/blood, cancer (prostate etc.)
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On the other hand he might be to old, never breed or if he does: does not pass his gene.
Well, there's still the chance that he passed on the gene(s) to some of his offspring before before "getting too old." Plus, old letches think they're never too old.
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nothing wrong with being a letch.
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> b) catching the disease, surviving by good nutrition and other lucky cases, no influence on breeding
Wealth and cultures that take good care of their most vulnerable members, or who've mastered effective rodent control, also "evolve". It's not genetic evolution, it's cultural evolution. But it's certainly as critical to survival and can also evolve, and should not be ignored when examining genetic evolution.
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Hey, an all or nothing thinker!
If a factor, such as disease, affects the reproductive success of some organisms and not others, and that difference is due to heritable factors, the population will evolve (slowly change) to one that contains a greater proportion of the successful phenotype. Your (c) is sufficient. Nobody "suddenly became immune" but nobody suggested any such thing. There's considerable evidence that the population of Europe did become more resistant overall to bubonic and pneumonic plague
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There's considerable evidence that the population of Europe did become more resistant overall to bubonic and pneumonic plague over time.
... and under same circumstances in our days the death toll would be the same. However due to less rats and less flees and better sewerage and sanitation in general such an outbreak is unlikely.
There is no such evidence
FTFY:
If a factor, such as disease, affects the reproductive success of some organisms and not others, and IFthat difference is due to heritable factors, t
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The AC has given you a couple of good references. One of the associated papers is particularly good:
http://www.pnas.org/content/11... [pnas.org] - this is freely available from PNAS. They looked at genetic variations in European and Roma populations. The Roma are a genetically distinct group originating in India who migrated to Europe but have not mixed extensively with Europeans. The authors found several examples of apparent convergent evolution, including several immune modulating genes. Some of these turned o
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As you point out, those immunities / evolutions are due to long term exposure to the relevant diseases and not due to the relatively short periods of plagues.
I was not aware that indeed some populations have now a genetic "resistance" however I originally only wanted to point out that such a resistance very unlikely evolves in a 30 years period (especially if you take into account reproduction cycles which limit such a period to max 3 generations)
To bad I can not tread the full article. Thanx for the link,
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> a) don't catch the disease, we don't know if that was genetic or
> luck, likely no influence on 'breeding'
> The plague is under control because of much much better
> sanitation, not because humans suddenly became 'immune' to it.
European Jewish communities had lower infection rates for Black Death, Bubonic Plague, etc. Back then, society knew nothing about bacteria, viruses, or sanitation. Jews followed their religious laws regard washing of dishes before meals, and washing their hands before mea
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European Jewish communities had lower infection rates for Black Death, Bubonic Plague, etc. Back then, society knew nothing about bacteria, viruses, or sanitation. Jews followed their religious laws regard washing of dishes before meals, and washing their hands before meals.
And this is another example of evolution, albeit of the memetic rather than genetic variety. If you start with a bunch of crazy religions prohibiting random things then after a few generations the ones that prohibited things that were dangerous are going to be more likely to survive than the ones that prohibited things that were beneficial. The prohibition against pork and shellfish in Judaism is another good example. Pigs are sufficiently similar to humans that it's relatively easy for diseases to cross
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European Jewish communities had lower infection rates for Black Death, Bubonic Plague, etc. Back then, society knew nothing about bacteria, viruses, or sanitation.
True except for the bold part.
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a) luck is a factor
b) nutrtition doesnt save you from plague
c) so your logic is that "because some people maybe too old, the whole concept is invalid" ? nonsense
Yes, sanitition is a big factor these days. As is knowing about the disease vectors, and when plague is found in a population, such as in rodents and otehr wildlife in areas of Northern California, warning people about it. Just the fact we know about it nowadays does a lot to make treatment easier.
But sanitation wasnt the factor in the later waves o
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b) nutrtition doesnt save you from plague
Of course it does. What is the likelihood surviving the plague if you are close to death by starvation versus being well fed?
But sanitation wasnt the factor in the later waves of the plague in medieval europe.
Of course it was.
With proper sewerage and sanitation, the plague either had not happened at all or killed much less people.
The "Black Death" didnt venture far outside of Europe, and the genetic markers are still prevalent in Europeans
That is wrong in so far that
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Or because the disease was never harmful to bats to begin with. How many thousands of species of microbes are living harmlessly in your body right this minute? How many are actually helpful to your continued survival? You couldn't even digest food effectively without help, and that's only the most obvious and well-understood symbiosis. But in some other species one of those beneficial microbes might find an ecological niche just similar enough to let it survive, but lacking some factor that regulated th
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i take supplements so I don't have any external "bugs" either inside or out. you should try it!
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The fact that you're able to type suggests otherwise. And unless you've been living in a hermeticaly sealed bubble consuming only sterilized food and water since birth your claim is ridiculous: microbes outmass all other life on Earth, and in your body they outnumber your own cells by roughly 10-to-1 (about 6 lbs worth in the average person)
Meanwhile supplements have *nothing* to do with microbes - unless you're specifically taking active cultures/probiotics which add *additional* microbes to your gut. Or
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In any case - as long as a disease don't have 100% lethality there will be survivors with better genes improving the genetic stock.
Or, at least, improving its ability to work in an environment where the disease in question is sufficiently prevalent. If there's a cost to the allele that improves survival rates, then, if the disease isn't so common, maybe it's no longer an improvement. (Were we to reduce malaria incidence to the level of an extremely rare nuisance, people with sickle-cell anemia might not consider the sickle-cell trait their parents had an improvement.)
old news (Score:2)
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The title is badly worded (surprise, surprise). It should have read Bats May Be Source of Ebola Patient Zero's Infection, or something like that. The article and summary text both correctly makes that distinction.
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Previously, they just had a probable index case. They've now done a followup field study that confirms this case and identifies a hollow tree where the kids used to play as a possible source of the infection - it contained a bat colony at the time. They didn't find evidence that other wild animals were infected, suggesting transmission directly from the bats rather than from other bushmeat. The paper is very readable and not paywalled:
http://embomolmed.embopress.or... [embopress.org]
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Though not referenced in that article, I can't help imagining a correlation was made from the large bat population (and guano) at Kitum Cave on Mt Elgin.
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I can't help imagining a correlation was made from the large bat population (and guano) at Kitum Cave on Mt Elgin.
Yes, the EMBOMM article mentions this:
"This [the hollow tree] may have resulted in massive exposure to bats and have created a situation similar to the one described for Marburg virus for which transmission from bats to humans has occurred in caves occupied by large bat colonies."
(Kitum is one of the caves where Marburg, a virus from the same family as Ebola, has been transmitted).
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Two year old eating bats. Right. He was probably hunting them too. With guns.
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Two year old eating bats. Right. He was probably hunting them too. With guns.
No, that's just in America.
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Thanks for explaining the joke.
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What is so unbelievable about the idea? If you've ever seen a two year old catch a reluctant cat you know that they can occasionally be crafty and/or lucky little beggars that actually catch their quarry: aka they manage to hunt successfully. And at two you *know* it's going to end up in their mouth (I suspect it's a *very* lucky bat that survives being caught by a two year old).
After that it would just be a question of whether instinct and local customs are sufficient for them to recognize it as food. C
Great. Bat Genocide Incoming (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine once word of this gets out to people in certain African nations infected by Ebola, it'll get distilled into "bats are threatening our survival" and lead to wholesale slaughter of bats. Something similar happened with cats mistakenly being associated with the Black Death. This will then lead to a surge in mosquito populations, which will then lead to a surge in malaria cases, which will likely kill more people than the Ebola outbreaks themselves.
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Or harder to hunt in relation to meat that can be sourced from them.
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But not to extinction or near extinction, which is the point I'm making. Humans hunting animals to near extinction is a sum of animal being valuable (for it meat, bones, imaginary values like alternative medicine uses and so on) vs how easy it is to hunt the said animal.
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Can you imagine? They would make mice look positively high-yield in comparison.
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bats have been known for over a decade to be the carriers of ebola. exterminating bats not a problem, plenty of other creatures eat misquitoes and there is treatment for malaria besides the natural immunity present in the humans there. bring the slaughter on, those filthy creatures carry many other harmful diseases.
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or you just innoculate bats against the disease.
similar programs have been very successful in the past.
How to contain Ebola .. (Score:2)
curse that batboy! (Score:1)
But that confirms he's real!
http://www.alexxcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/bat-boy-WWN.jpeg
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
It means "patient zero for this outbreak". Unlike some diseases, Ebola doesn't have a constant presence in the human species. Most of the time, there are no humans on the planet infected with Ebola (compare and contrast with the common cold, which exists in an endemic steady state among humans).
Ebola outbreaks begin when a human is exposed to the disease from a non-human source (bats have been suspected for decades, but it was tricky to pin down). So "patient zero" for an Ebola outbreak is the human who is the first to be infected (and who then goes on to infect others).
One of the big questions about Ebola outbreaks is why there aren't more of them. If bats are the carriers, then given how widespread bats are across Africa, why do outbreaks so isolated? Tracking down the patient zero for each outbreak is crucial if we're going to understand that (and understanding it could be the key to preventing future outbreaks).
I told him... (Score:2)
...that we couldn't stop there!
BAT COUNTRY! (Score:3)
Weekly World News (Score:2)
WTF. Don't tell me that old Weekly World News article about batboy turns out to be true.
A boy was bitten by a bat? (Score:3)
Is his name Robin, by any chance?
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Haven't been to Africa hey? They two year olds are more than capable of running around free, finding cool places like bat colonies, stalking and attempting to catch (maybe even succeeding) small insects and animals, and picking up dead ones off the ground. The ones in North America used to be that capable as well, but now they seem to mostly ride around in strollers.
In Africa they're even quite good at fleecing tourists.
speciesist! (Score:2)
The bat, presumably, is -1?
bushmeat (Score:1)
Outlaw Bats! (Score:1)
What? Not the wooden kind but rather the furry kind?
Nevermind.
Re:Bats? (Score:5, Funny)
Are you suggesting that other races rather die of hunger than eat animals?
Must be a weird vegan community you were raised in.
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Are you suggesting "African" is a race?
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Well trolled.
Re: Bats? (Score:4, Funny)
Must be a weird vegan community you were raised in.
It's a matter of principle. They were only eating fruit bats.
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Are you suggesting that other races rather die of hunger than eat animals?
Must be a weird vegan community you were raised in.
Or PETA.