Pathophysiology of Ebola virus infection: a review of current literature

ABSTRACT

By September 2014 the Ebola outbreak in West Africa had claimed more than 2600 lives. The disease has no approved drug or vaccines and cases have been treated with experimental drugs. Supportive care is the main stay of treatment of cases. Although research into understanding the pathophysiology of the Ebola virus has been going on for years, difficulty in conducting clinical studies because of outbreaks occurring in isolated remote villages have meant that most of the current literature on the pathophysiology of Ebola virus is from animal models. The 2014 outbreak in West Africa has put a spot light on this infection. Ebola virus infection results in cell necrosis and the ensuing systemic inflammatory responses that occurs causes the clinical symptoms and death in severe cases with a case fatality rate of 50%. Ebola virus targets mainly endothelial cells and macrophages but cells from other tissues can also be infected. Immunity to Ebola virus is not well defined and poorly understood, making development of therapeutic drugs and vaccines challenging. This is a brief review of some current literature on the pathogenesis of Ebola virus.