Ebola virus (red) in the eye of a rhesus monkey survivor COURTESY OF XIANKUN (KEVIN) ZENGAlthough the Ebola outbreak in West Africa that started in 2013 was declared over more than a year ago, the disease lingers on. Many Ebola survivors have suffered from joint aches, vision problems, hearing loss, headaches, and other symptoms, a phenomenon dubbed “post-Ebola syndrome.” Researchers studying macaques have a better understanding of why that might be: they’ve tracked the progression of Ebola virus through various tissues of monkeys who have survived acute infections and found evidence of long-term viral persistence and possible replication.
“[T]hey essentially found that the Ebola virus can persist in a number of sites that we consider immune privileged, including the eye, the brain, and the reproductive organs, or the testes,” Emory University opthalmologist Steven Yeh, who treated a high-profile case of eye inflammation caused by persistent Ebola virus and studies Ebola persistence, tells The Scientist. “I think it’s got implications from the standpoint of Ebola survivorship, as to why Ebola survivors in West Africa will develop long-term survivor complications, like eye disease, central nervous system manifestations, as well as the important public health issue of viral persistence in reproductive organs and the risk of sexual transmission.”
As more and more patients survive Ebola infections, the lasting complications have become more of a public health ...
