Links to new research on Ebola: May 2016

Yes, this is late. Sorry. But here’s all the new stuff I saw in May of this year:

Therapeutics and Vaccines

• Karen Martins and colleagues provide an overview of 11 current candidate Ebola vaccines. Ebola Virus Disease Candidate Vaccines Under Evaluation in Clinical Trials.
• Selidji Agnandji and colleagues report on three phase-1 trials of rVSV-ZEBOV. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1502924
• Ana Maria Henao-Restrepo and colleagues review the role played by the WHO in developing Ebola vaccines during the recent epidemic. On a path to accelerate access to Ebola vaccines: The WHO’s research and development efforts during the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Epidemiology

• Paula Ruibal and colleagues examine the T-cell response to Ebola, and how the virus disrupts it. Unique human immune signature of Ebola virus disease in Guinea.
• Hilary Bower and colleagues evaluate exposure-  and age-specific attack rates in Ebola-Affected Households in Sierra Leone.
• Xiaoping Shao and colleagues describe the clinical presentation and care of 5 confirmed cases of Ebola seen at the China Ebola Treatment Unit, Liberia.
• Bridgette Billioux and colleagues describe 3 case studies of acute neurological manifestations of Ebola. Accounts from Liberia: Reports of Neurological Manifestations During the Acute Phase of Ebola Virus Disease.
• Atis Muehlenbachs and colleagues describe 2 case histories of pregnant women with Ebola from Uganda and the DRC. Ebola virus disease in pregnancy: clinical, histopathologic and immunohistochemical findings.
• Armando Arias and colleagues describe the local lab setup for sequencing Ebola, and its use in contact and outbreak investigations. Rapid outbreak sequencing of Ebola virus in Sierra Leone identifies transmission chains linked to sporadic cases.
• Felicity Fitzgerald and colleagues describe the EHU model and highlight the lack of understanding on best practice for child care in the context of possible Ebola infection. Ebola response in Sierra Leone: The impact on children.
• Comparison of children testing negative and positive for Ebola virus disease in Ebola holding units, Sierra Leone.
• Felicity Fitzgerald and other colleagues presented a comparison of children testing negative and positive for Ebola at EHUs in Sierra Leone and another describing the positive cohort in detail.

Epidemic control strategies (mostly models)

• Benjamin Ivorra and colleagues validate Be-CoDiS (Between-Countries Disease Spread), a deterministic spatial-temporal model, using data from the West Africa outbreak.Stability and sensitivity analysis of Be-CoDiS, an epidemiological model to predict the spread of human diseases between countries.
• Jia Kangbai, in his masters thesis, evaluates how gender predicts who calls in suspected Ebola cases to cellphone-based syndromic surviellance systems. Social network analysis of cellphone surveillance data for Ebola in Sierra Leone.
• Zhilan Feng and colleagues explore which model assumptions may have driven the poor performance of many mathematical models for Ebola. Mathematical models of Ebola—Consequences of underlying assumptions.

Ebola healthcare

• Mikiko Senga and colleagues describe the 66 healthworker Ebola cases at Kenema Government Hospital early in the epidemic. Factors Underlying Ebola Virus Infection Among Health Workers, Kenema, Sierra Leone, 2014-2015.
• Lucy Lamb and colleagues describe the design process for the UK military ETU sent to Sierra Leone. Formulating and improving care while mitigating risk in a military Ebola virus disease treatment unit.
• Rosemarie Fernandez and colleagues highlight the potential for checklists to significantly reduce the potential for healthcare worker infection. Proactive Risk Assessment for Ebola-Infected Patients: A Systematic Approach to Identifying and Minimizing Risk to Healthcare Personnel.

Survivors

• Mamadou Sow and colleagues show ongoing virus in semen even at 6-8 months post-illness in 68 men. New Evidence of Long-lasting Persistence of Ebola Virus Genetic Material in Semen of Survivors. Ian Croziera provides an editorial on the Sow et al. article. Ebola Virus RNA in the Semen of Male Survivors of Ebola Virus Disease: The Uncertain Gravitas of a Privileged Persistence.
• Edward Green and colleagues show low levels of virus secretion 6 weeks post-viraemia in 112 survivors in largely non-genital/semen samples. Viraemia and Ebola virus secretion in survivors of Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone: a cross-sectional cohort study.
• Jessica L. Abbate and colleagues model the potential impact of post-infection infectiousness via sexual intercourse. Potential Impact of Sexual Transmission on Ebola Virus Epidemiology: Sierra Leone as a Case Study.
• Hilary Bower and colleagues also examined rates of re-emerging illness and death amongst survivors. Deaths, late deaths, and role of infecting dose in Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone: retrospective cohort study.

Impact of Ebola on other things

• Jonathan Suk and colleagues describe a post-Ebola measles outbreak in Lola, Guinea, January–June 2015.
• Isaac Luginaah and colleagues  describe antenatal care prior to the outbreak. Timing and utilization of antenatal care services in Liberia: Understanding the pre-Ebola epidemic context.

Other items (mostly trying to understand what went wrong)

• Lawrence O. Gostin and colleagues summarize the findings of four commissions evaluating the West African outbreak and its response. Toward a Common Secure Future: Four Global Commissions in the Wake of Ebola.
• Nidhi Bhatnagar and colleagues present a scoping review highlighting various potential explanations for the size of the West Africa outbreak. Study of recent Ebola virus outbreak and lessons learned: A scoping study.
• Michael Oluyemi Babalola and Georgina Njideka Odaibo conduct a biological SWOT analysis of Ebola as a pathogen. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOTs) analyses of the Ebola virus.
• Vera Scott and colleagues evaluate how using a PHC perspective could help avoid future similar Ebola outbreaks in the region. Critiquing the response to the Ebola epidemic through a Primary Health Care Approach.
• Shaunak Sastry and Alessandro Lovari use a narrative analysis framework to study the Ebola-related messaging on the WHO and CDC Facebook pages. Communicating the Ontological Narrative of Ebola: An Emerging Disease in the Time of “Epidemic 2.0”.
• Kate Thomas, editor, provides a retrospective of Ebola Deeply‘s work during the outbreak.

One more month of material to come…