SCIENTISTS say they have found how the lethal Ebola
virus blocks and disables the body’s ability to battle
infections in a discovery that should help the search for
potential cures and vaccines.
A group of scientists in the United States found that
Ebola carries a protein called VP24 that interferes with a
molecule called interferon, which is vital to the immune
response.
“One of the key reasons that Ebola virus is so deadly is
because it disrupts the body’s immune response to the
infection,” said Chris Basler of the Icahn School of
Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, who worked on the
study. “Figuring out how VP24 promotes this disruption
will suggest new ways to defeat the virus.”
The team, lead by Gaya Amarasinghe from Washington
University School of Medicine, found that VP24 works by
stopping something called “transcription factor STAT1”
– which carries interferon’s antiviral message – from
entering the nucleus of a cell and initiating an immune
response.
“This study shows just how nefarious the Ebola virus can
be,” said Ben Neuman, a virologist at Britain’s university
of Reading who was not directly involved in this study.
“Ebola virus carries a small tool that intercepts the cell’s
distress signals, and when this happens, it disables some
of the most useful machinery that our bodies have for
fighting Ebola. That leaves the body with only crude
defences that are less effective at stopping the virus, and
end up causing much of the damage that can eventually
lead to death.”
Ebola is one of the most deadly diseases known in
humans and has a case fatality rate of up to 90 percent.
In the current epidemic in West Africa, the virus has
infected more than 1,800 people. So far, 1,013 of these
have died the vast majority in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone.

source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/08/scientists-discover-ebola-virus-disables-immune-response/

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