Quote:
Originally Posted by OhZone
Where does it say that there were tests to isolate the virus of any of the African victims?
Where does it say that those who were flown to the US had tissue samples taken to prove the existence of the virus in their bodies?
The article says it can be done, so why wasn't it?
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It has been done.
MMS: Error
"In March 2014, the World Health Organization was notified of an outbreak of a communicable disease characterized by fever, severe diarrhea, vomiting, and a high fatality rate in Guinea. Virologic investigation identified Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV) as the causative agent."
"About 100 μl of all serum samples was used to inoculate Vero E6 cells maintained in 25-cm2 flasks in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium containing 2 to 5% fetal-calf serum and penicillin–streptomycin. Cells and supernatant were passaged several times.
Virus growth in the cells was verified on immunofluorescence with the use of polyclonal mouse anti-EBOV–specific antibodies in the serum of mice challenged with EBOV or on the basis of an increase in viral levels in the cell-culture supernatant over several orders of magnitude, as measured on real-time RT-PCR."
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EBOV was identified in the serum of one patient on electron microscopy and
was isolated in cell culture from 5 patients."
Quote:
Originally Posted by OhZone
The virus would die too?
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Virus growing in a culture causes visible changes to the cells being used. A damaged cell culture would be discarded and not used at all. That totally ignores that measures are taken to make sure that cell cultures are kept free of viruses until they are used.
Role of Cell Culture for Virus Detection in the Age of Technology
Note that handling infectious Ebola virus requires a Level 4 biosafety facility. Thus it is done to study the virus itself, not to identify infected patients. Virus isolation in culture is not done for clinical diagnostic purposes because methods that can identify inactivated virus are safer and easier to use.