Many in West Africa Are Thought to Be Immune, but Finding Them Will Not Be Easy

nytimes.com

22 points·Libertatea··6 comments

"Right now, there are about 1,800 survivors of the current West African outbreak, all of whom are now immune, of course. But there may be many thousands more."

Well, that's conjecture, oddly enough, reinfecting people with a deadly disease has various ethical issues - so there aren't any experiments to look at.

When it was tested with primates [1] they all survived after a 10 week period but 2 out of 6 died after 13 week period. How this works for humans god knows but 'all of whom are now immune' I wouldn't be so confident.

[1] http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131128/srep03365/full/srep03...

Immune to what? Should keep the original title.

On another related note, when titles are edited by HN staff they shouldn't be in Title Case. That's deceptive.

If you look at the light-grey note at the bottom of the article, you will find this:

A version of this article appears in print on September 6, 2014, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Many in West Africa Are Thought to Be Immune, but Finding Them Will Not Be Easy.

So that was the original (printed) title.

You know what I meant, right? And the article mentioned as the source is not linkable.

The hypothesis is that immunity is conferred by the presence of ebola antibodies developed after very-low-dose exposure from eating fruits visited by infected bats.

> His teams took 4,349 blood samples in 220 randomly selected villages. They found that 15 percent of Gabon’s population had antibodies. But it varied widely: near the coast, only 3 percent did; in some jungle villages near the Congo border, up to 34 percent did.

>Also, their antibody levels varied widely, and what level is protective is roughly known for lab monkeys, but not for humans.

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