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Ebola: Ebola Virus
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Bioterrorism, or use of the Ebola virus as a biological weapon, is a common fear of people who know about the virus. There is not much information published about the bioterrorism potential of Ebola, obviously for security reasons. However, scientists do say that altering the Ebola virus for biological warfare is possible although unlikely. The difficulty in changing Ebola to a potential virus is twofold: first, the Ebola virus would have to be airborne to be effective. Although some have noted that Ebola can travel through water droplets in the air (Preston 260), it is currently not possible for Ebola to travel through the air by itself (Russell). Second, the Ebola virus would have to be transported in a way that is not fatal to the people who use it as a weapon, or would have to be carried by people who are willing to die a gruesome death.
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Ebola is one of two members of a family of RNA viruses called the Filoviridae. Filovirus virions appear in several shapes: long, sometimes branched filaments, as well as shorter filaments shaped like a "6," a "U," or a circle. The virus filaments may measure up to 14,000 nanometers in length, with a uniform diameter of 80 nanometers. They are enveloped in a fatty membrane. Each virion contains one molecule of RNA. New viruses are created by budding from the surface of their hosts' cells; ... filovirus replication is not fully understood.
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Ebola has a particular affinity for connective tissue, which is the tissue that holds the internal organs together. By its action, the virus actually acts on the collagen (the protein which is a component of connective tissue) and converts it into a soft mush and under layers of the skin die.
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Ebola virus infection is fatal in a majority of cases, subjecting its victims to a horrible hemorrhagic disease which kills them in a matter of days. The natural reservoir of the virus remains unknown, as do the specifics of pathogenesis of the infection. The virus has a very specific tropism for liver cells and cells of the reticuloendothelial system, e.g. macrophages. Massive destruction of the liver is a hallmark feature of the disease. Researchers have ... noted that people killed by the virus have not had the time to mount an immune response.
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Outbreaks of infection with the Ebola virus appear sporadically and suddenly. The outbreak rapidly moves through the local population and often just as quickly ends. The initial infection is presumable by contact between the person and the animal that harbors the virus. Subsequent person-to-person spread likely occurs by contamination with the infected blood or body tissues of an infected person in the home or hospital setting, or via contaminated needles. The fact that infected people tend to be in more under-developed regions, where even the health care facilities are not as likely to be equipped with isolation wards, furthers the risk of spread. The person-to-person passage is immediate; unlike the animal host, people do not harbor the virus for lengthy periods of time.
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Ebola is limited on a global scale due to its difficulty in spreading by airborne transmission and the period of time that the virus can use a living and contagious victim to spread compared to other infectious diseases. In isolated settings such as a quarantined hospital or a remote village, most victims are infected shortly after the first case of infection is present. In addition, the quick onset of symptoms from the time the disease becomes contagious in an individual makes it easy to identify sick individuals and limits an individual's ability to spread the disease by traveling. Although bodies of the deceased are still infectious, many doctors implemented measures to properly dispose of dead bodies in spite of some traditional local burial rituals.[12]
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Ebola Virus