Ebola has not become deadlier since the first outbreak 40 years ago, new research reveals today.
Using cutting-edge computer analysis, researchers from The University of Manchester, England, show that although there have been a high number of genetic changes in the Ebola virus, it has not changed at a functional level.
Professor Simon Lovell from the Faculty of Life Sciences said its findings, published in Virology, reveal that the higher death toll from the current outbreak is not due to mutations or the virus evolving to be more deadly or more virulent.
He came to the conclusion after analysing data from every outbreak since 1976 to see what changes had occurred in the Ribonucleic acid (RNA) of the virus and using a computational approach that PhD student Abayomi Olabode had developed for examining changes in HIV-1.
That study highlighted adaptions within the virus in the context of protein structure but when it was used to examine the Ebola virus, they discovered something different.
“What we found was that whilst Ebola is mutating, it isn’t evolving to the point of adapting to become more or less virulent,” said Prof Lovell.
“The function of the virus has remained the same over the past four decades which really surprised us. Unfortunately this does mean the Ebola virus that has now emerged on several occasions since the 1970s will very probably do so again.”
His colleague Professor David Robertson the fact that the virus has not evolved was good news because it meant that vaccines and treatments that had been developed to tackle the latest outbreak, which has killed about 10,500 people, had a good chance of working.
Professor Robertson said this type of computational study could be used on future outbreaks to analyse what is happening in real time within the virus.
However, it is also important to undertake analysis to identify when a virus becomes less potent, say the research team, because infected individuals could potentially infect more people if they did not progress to severe illness.
Ebola virus is evolving but not changing: no evidence for functional change in EBOV from 1976 to the 2014 outbreak. Virology 14 April 2015
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