Ebola researchers take new look at risk off sexual transmission
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Concerned about the potential for sexual transmission of Ebola, international health officials are investigating new reports of suspected cases and beginning studies to determine how often and how long the virus remains active in semen. They are also warning Ebola survivors to practice protected sex indefinitely.
A few possible cases of sexual transmission surfaced during the peak of the epidemic in West Africa, but little follow-up occurred then. Now, with new infections down to around three dozen a week across the three affected countries, medical investigators are focused on two women who died of the disease last month – one in Liberia and the other in Sierra Leone.
The women had no known risk factors, but they did have male partners who had survived Ebola last year, suggesting that the virus could be active in semen longer than researchers had previously detected and that it could spread through sexual activity.
In recent days, U.S. and Liberian scientists have begun finding genomic evidence in support of sexual contact being the cause of the Liberian case, researchers said. Even though such transmission has never been confirmed and is assumed to be rare, it has raised concerns because of the potential impact on declaring the epidemic over.
Public health officials have faced many hurdles in fighting Ebola in West Africa – from changing burial practices to overcoming beliefs that foreign doctors in their moon suits had come to kill rather than cure patients. But perhaps no topic is as intimate and potentially incendiary as sexual transmission.
Experts have deep concerns about how to carry on research without provoking a backlash against their efforts or further stigmatizing survivors.
“There are all the issues we have seen and addressed during HIV at the beginning, including confidentiality, and should the family know or not,” said Dr. Pierre Formenty, an Ebola expert at the World Health Organization. “We underestimate all the effort we’re going to have to make for this type of transmission.”