Signs and symptoms EHF is a severe acute viral illness often characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. Laboratory findings show low counts of white blood cells and platelets as well as elevated liver enzymes. People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. Ebola virus was isolated from seminal fluid up to the 61st day after the onset of illness in a laboratory acquired case. The incubation period (interval from infection to onset of symptoms) varies between 2 to 21 days. During EHF outbreaks, the case-fatality rate has varied from outbreak to outbreak between 25% and 90%. Diagnosis Differential diagnoses include, malaria, typhoid fever, shigellosis, cholera, leptospirosis, plague, rickettsiosis, relapsing fever, meningitis, hepatitis and other VHFs. Ebola virus infections can only be diagnosed definitively in the laboratory by a number of different tests: • enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) • antigen detection tests • serum neutralization test • reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay • virus isolation by cell culture. Tests on samples from patients are an extreme biohazard risk and should only be conducted under maximum biological containment conditions. Treatment and vaccine Severe cases require intensive supportive care. Patients are frequently dehydrated and in need of intravenous fluids or oral rehydration with solutions containing electrolytes. No specific treatment or vaccine is yet available for EHF. New drug therapies have shown promising results in laboratory studies and are currently being evaluated. Several vaccines are being tested but it could be several years before any are available.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 17:03:37 +0000
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