According to World Health Organization, the number of Ebola cases has already gone beyond 10,000. More than 4,500 had already died, although recent news suggests that the outbreak is slowing down in Liberia.
Nevertheless, most news reports tend to talk too much on the death toll when, in fact, the current outbreak has also produced a growing number of Ebola survivors, a fact that compelled a New Orleans doctor to identify the reasons for recovery.
Dr. John Schieffelin is a native of New Orleans, USA, but has traveled to West Africa many times over the last four years. He's one of the doctors who are currently working on Ebola patients.
The survival of some of them prompted him to conduct a study using the data of Kenema Government Hospital between May 25 and July 18. Although 100 patients were admitted during the period, only 44 medical records had been comprehensively analyzed since some of them were burned out of fear of possible contamination.
Nevertheless, they were enough for Dr. Schieffelin, who is part of Tulane University and the lead author of the study, and his team to gather very important information.
He discovered that the risks of succumbing to Ebola infection are affected by age, type of symptom the patient exhibits usually upon admission, and viral load.
The most vulnerable patients, for example, are those who are more than 45 years old with the risk of dying as high as 94% compared to around 55% of patients below 21 years.
Moreover, although the most common symptom of the virus is fever, gastrointestinal problems like diarrhea and other severe symptoms are the ones that often cause death. Thus, he recommends that health workers should focus on providing the needed IV fluids to avoid dehydration and maintain the body's immunity to fight the Ebola virus.
When it comes to viral load, those who have over 10 million viral copies per millimeter have a 94% risk of dying.
Another result that may have a potential impact on Ebola protocols is the length of virus incubation. Based on the study, patients show symptoms within 6 to 12 days, which may mean shorter days of quarantine especially for travelers from West Africa.
His study has been online in New England Journal of Medicine since Wednesday, October 29.