The Ebola virus has been on a lethal journey since an outbreak in West Africa in March 2014, infecting more than 10,000 people in different countries and claiming some 5,000 victims so far.
Now, a team of researchers from the Department of Microbiology at the University of Washington (USA) has carried out an experiment with laboratory mice in order to find out why some patients infected by Ebola are saved and others die . The result of the study, published in the journal Science , reveals that the key is in the genes.
For their experiment, the scientists infected with the Zaire strain of Ebola (the same species of virus that causes the current outbreak) but in a variant of its own for mice, discovering that survival has a determining genetic component .
Mice infected with the Ebola strain lost weight during the first days after infection. Despite this, 19% of the mice did not die and regained their weight in the following two weeks. 11% were partially resistant and less than half of them died during the experiment. In sum, the surviving mice experienced increased activity in genes that order blood vessel repair and the production of white blood cells that fight infection .
“This is the first study to show definitively that the genetic background of the host organism can determine the wide range of manifestations of the disease. It is also the first model that allows specific genes to be linked to this result ”, explains Angela Rasmussen, co-author of the study, to the Sinc agency.
This finding, according to the authors, will be vital for understanding the genetic basis of the virus , as well as for the development of tools for its diagnosis and drugs or vaccines to prevent outbreaks in the future.
