The world has been struck with several Ebola outbreaks. However, two new studies reveal that Ebola may virus may live in men's semen far longer than expected and could be sexually transmitted to survivor's partner.
As reported in Time, officials have discovered one case in March 2015 wherein a Liberian man who had survived Ebola may have possibly passed the virus on to his female partner after a few months thinking that it was already safe for a survivor to engage in sexual activity. It was reported that genetic material of Ebola was found present in the man's sperm 175 days after he had developed the symptoms, which is 74 days more than any previous cases studied at that time.
With this finding, health officials changed their guidelines which previously advised Ebola virus survivors to abstain from sexual activity for three months. Three months is usually the duration that experts believed Ebola to remain in semen. The United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) modified their guidelines to recommend that survivors abstain from sexual activity or use a condom for the foreseeable future until further information becomes available. Health officials have suspected that the Ebola virus may be transmitted sexually but this had not occurred before the case mentioned.
Health experts now have more information about Ebola virus as a sexually transmitted disease as new two studies were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine last Wednesday.
In one study, it was confirmed that the case with the Liberian man was a direct transmission from man to woman, suggesting that sexual activity was how the woman was infected. The researchers confirmed the genetic profile of the Ebola strain was indeed from the man. The woman later on died from the infection while the man survived.
In the second study, some of the semen samples 93 male Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone have been found positive of Ebola virus after nine months since they presented symptoms of the disease. In the first three months, all the men were positive of Ebola virus. Over half of the men still remained positive between four to six months after they showed symptoms. A quarter of the men still remained positive between seven to nine months since the start of their illness.
This is quite alarming since never before has there been a large number of Ebola survivors. Researchers are still doing further studies what the aftermath of the virus could lead to. This new study will give the survivors a deeper understanding of disease and improve the care that survivors may need.
