TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The result of recent study by scientists at the National Institutes of Health, United States, denied the fear of Ebola turning into ‘supervirus’ as it finds the virus not mutating as quickly as possible.
"We do not see any evidence that the virus is mutating any more rapidly than has been reported in previous outbreaks," said Thomas Hoenen, a postdoctoral fellow in virology at the National Institutes of Health and one of the researchers on the study, as quoted by Live Science on Friday, March 2015.
In a 2014 study published in the journal Science, researchers had suggested that the Ebola virus in the West African epidemic was mutating twice as fast as other Ebola virus strains. In that study, researchers compared viral samples that were taken from people who became infected only three months apart, a relatively short time period, Hoenen said. Therefore, Hoenen and his team wanted to look at a data set that goes over a much longer period of time.
“The new study suggests that the Ebola virus's mutation rate in West Africa is fairly similar to that of other RNA viruses, such as rhinovirus, the virus that causes the common cold, “ said Angela Rasmussen a microbilogist at the University of Washington.
"It doesn't appear to be a supervirus. It basically indicates that our drugs and vaccines that were developed for Central African strains will probably still be effective against West African strains."
Ebola outbreak hit 25,000 people in West Africa and killed 10,300 people. Several variant of vaccines and cures are being developed to combat the virus.
RAYMUNDUS RIKANG | LIVE SCIENCE
