ABOVE: An Ebola survivor donates plasma at the blood bank at Connaught Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
JANET SCOTT
Asubstantial proportion of people who survive Ebola may produce a spike in antibody levels more than six months after they’ve recovered from the disease, according to a study published today (January 27) in Nature.
Analyzing multiple plasma samples from 51 survivors of the West African outbreak of 2013–2016, researchers found that the levels of virus-neutralizing antibodies declined, as expected, in the days and weeks following recovery. But these levels shot up again in some survivors around the 200- to 300-day mark before declining again—evidence that Ebola virus may be lingering inside their bodies and re-emerging to trigger immune defenses, the researchers conclude in their paper.
“The idea that there can be a source of virus that could restimulate the immune system isn’t surprising” in itself, says Carl Davis, an immunologist at Emory ...
