Ebola Virus in Africa Outbreak Is a New Strain

Wednesday, April 16, 2014
By Paul Martin

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
ABCNews.com
April 17, 2014

The Ebola virus that has killed scores of people in Guinea this year is a new strain — evidence that the disease did not spread there from outbreaks in some other African nations, scientists report.

“The source of the virus is still not known,” but it was not imported from nearby countries, said Dr. Stephan Gunther of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany.

He led an international team of researchers who studied the genetics of the virus and reported results online Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The ongoing outbreak has caused panic and killed more than 120 people in West Africa, mostly in Guinea, according to the World Health Organization.

Ebola (ee-BOH’-lah) causes internal bleeding and organ failure and is fatal in 30 percent to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain. It spreads through direct contact with infected people, and some earlier cases have been linked to certain fruit bats that live in West Africa.

There is no cure or vaccine, so containing the outbreak has focused on supportive care for those infected with the virus and isolating them to limit its spread.

Earlier, health officials had said the Guinea Ebola was a Zaire strain, different from the kind that has caused cases in other parts of Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo used to be called Zaire.

The new research analyzed blood samples from 20 patients in the current outbreak and found the strain was unique.

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