Ebola Analysis Finds Virus Hasn't Become Deadlier, Yet

ICT  INFECTION CONTROL TODAY                                                                  April 14, 2015
(Scroll down for full study)
Research from the University of Manchester using cutting-edge computer analysis reveals that despite mutating, Ebola hasn’t evolved to become deadlier since the first outbreak 40 years ago. The surprising results demonstrate that while a high number of genetic changes have been recorded in the virus, it hasn’t changed at a functional level to become more or less virulent.

The findings, published in the journal Virology, demonstrate that the much higher death toll during the current outbreak, with the figure at nearly 10,500, isn’t due to mutations/evolution making the virus more deadly or more virulent.

As professor Simon Lovell from the Faculty of Life Sciences explains.... What we found was that whilst Ebola is mutating, it isn’t evolving to the point of adapting to become more or less virulent. 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.”

Professor David Robertson says the findings can be seen as good news: “The fact that Ebola isn’t changing in a way that effects the virulence of the disease means that vaccines and treatments developed during this current outbreak have a very high chance of being effective against future outbreaks. It also means that methods to successfully tackle the virus should work again, so hopefully in the future an outbreak can be stopped from spreading at a much earlier stage.”

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http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/news/2015/04/ebola-analysis-finds-virus-hasnt-become-deadlier-yet.aspx

Ebolavirus is evolving but not changing: No evidence for functional change in EBOV from 1976 to the 2014 outbreak

 SCIENCE NEWS TODAY by Abayomi S. Olabode,Xiaowei Jiang, David L. Robertson ^and  Simon C. Lovell^a

....We computationally analyze the variation associated with all EVD outbreaks, and find none of the amino acid replacements lead to identifiable functional changes. These changes have minimal effect on protein structure, being neither stabilizing nor destabilizing, are not found in regions of the proteins associated with known functions and tend to cluster in poorly constrained regions of proteins, specifically intrinsically disordered regions.

We find no evidence that the difference between the current and previous outbreaks is due to evolutionary changes associated with transmission to humans. Instead, epidemiological factors are likely to be responsible for the unprecedented spread of EVD....

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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042682215001695