Although researchers have known since 1999 that traces of the Ebola virus could remain in semen for months, two papers published in The New England Journal of Medicine today offer more detail about the frightening possibility that survivors of an infection could rekindle outbreaks. One study focuses on nearly 100 men in Sierra Leone who survived the dreaded viral illness, whereas the second one documents a clear case of sexual transmission of Ebola virus.
In the Sierra Leone study, researchers found Ebola viral RNA in semen samples from almost half the 93 men they tested. The likelihood of finding viral RNA declined as time from disease onset increased: All nine men who were tested 2 to 3 months after they fell ill had evidence of Ebola RNA in their semen, but the researchers found it in only 26 of 40 men whose infections had started 4 to 6 months earlier and in 11 of 43 men whose infections had started 7 to 9 months earlier. The result from one Ebola patient tested 10 months after disease onset was indeterminate.
Although researchers have known since 1999 that traces of the Ebola virus could remain in semen for months, two papers published in The New England Journal of Medicine today offer more detail about the frightening possibility that survivors of an infection could rekindle outbreaks. One study focuses on nearly 100 men in Sierra Leone who survived the dreaded viral illness, whereas the second one documents a clear case of sexual transmission of Ebola virus.
In the Sierra Leone study, researchers found Ebola viral RNA in semen samples from almost half the 93 men they tested. The likelihood of finding viral RNA declined as time from disease onset increased: All nine men who were tested 2 to 3 months after they fell ill had evidence of Ebola RNA in their semen, but the researchers found it in only 26 of 40 men whose infections had started 4 to 6 months earlier and in 11 of 43 men whose infections had started 7 to 9 months earlier. The result from one Ebola patient tested 10 months after disease onset was indeterminate.
Detecting viral RNA does not mean that these survivors harbor a virus that’s capable of establishing an infection in a sexual partner. “We do not yet have sufficient information to assess the risk of transmission through sexual intercourse, oral sex, or other sex acts from men with viable virus in their semen,” the authors from Sierra Leone and the World Health Organization (WHO) wrote. Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta are attempting to isolate virus from the semen samples, says Nathalie Broutet, an infectious disease epidemiologist at WHO in Geneva and one of the study’s authors.
Ebola screening image via Shutterstock.
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