Ebola outbreak in DR Congo traced back to preparation of meat from a dead chimpanzee - However it could have been pigs

[Gert van der Hoek]

Ebola outbreak in DR Congo traced back to preparation of meat from a dead chimpanzee

NEJM October 15, 2014DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1411099

Ebola Virus Disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo


BACKGROUND
The seventh reported outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the equatorial African country of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) began on July 26, 2014, as another large EVD epidemic continued to spread in West Africa. Simultaneous reports of EVD in equatorial and West Africa raised the question of whether the two outbreaks were linked.

METHODS
We obtained data from patients in the DRC, using the standard World Health Organization clinical-investigation form for viral hemorrhagic fevers. Patients were classified as having suspected, probable, or confirmed EVD or a non-EVD illness. Blood samples were obtained for polymerase-chain-reaction–based diagnosis, viral isolation, sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis.

RESULTS
The outbreak began in Inkanamongo village in the vicinity of Boende town in Équateur province and has been confined to that province. A total of 69 suspected, probable, or confirmed cases were reported between July 26 and October 7, 2014, including 8 cases among health care workers, with 49 deaths. As of October 7, there have been approximately six generations of cases of EVD since the outbreak began. The reported weekly case incidence peaked in the weeks of August 17 and 24 and has since fallen sharply. Genome sequencing revealed Ebola virus (EBOV, Zaire species) as the cause of this outbreak. A coding-complete genome sequence of EBOV that was isolated during this outbreak showed 99.2% identity with the most closely related variant from the 1995 outbreak in Kikwit in the DRC and 96.8% identity to EBOV variants that are currently circulating in West Africa.


CONCLUSIONS
The current EVD outbreak in the DRC has clinical and epidemiologic characteristics that are similar to those of previous EVD outbreaks in equatorial Africa. The causal agent is a local EBOV variant, and this outbreak has a zoonotic origin different from that in the 2014 epidemic in West Africa. (Funded by the Centre International de Recherches Médicales de Franceville and others.)

Link to full article

[nola_mnr]

Re: Ebola outbreak in DR Congo traced back to preparation of meat from a dead chimpanzee

http://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/ebola-sleuths-scour-dr-congo-jungle-source-outbreak

Ebola sleuths scour DR Congo jungle for source of outbreak

[...]
The DR Congo outbreak was initially traced to a woman who died shortly after preparing bush meat that that been hunted by her husband, a pastor.

Today experts are almost certain that she was not the "index case".
[...]
Another Ikanamongo resident, Jean-Paul Iloko, said that "before the epidemic hit the village, all the pigs died as well as some other farmyard animals."

Other accounts gathered in the region confirm that a porcine fever epidemic preceded the Ebola outbreak. "When (the pigs) were dying we were eating them without knowing that we shouldn't," Iloko said.

Kebela said it was the third time, after 2007 and 2012, that widespread pig deaths had preceded Ebola outbreaks in humans in the DR Congo.

And it has been established that the pigs that died in 2012 carried the Ebola virus, he said.
[...]

[Vibrant62]

Re: Ebola outbreak in DR Congo traced back to preparation of meat from a dead chimpanzee - However it could have been pigs

Could this be an intermediate vector for spread? If so could be involved in perpetuating the transmission chains in West Africa.

22 September, 2014

The Ebola victims were buried in an expanding stretch of fresh muddy graves under a giant cotton tree, and the makeshift arrangements are seen as a looming threat by the residents of the slum next to it. No barrier stops the pigs rooting in the adjoining trash field from digging in the fresh Ebola graves, which residents say they often do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/wo...=top-news&_r=0