A VACCINE has been tested that could prevent the deadly Marburg virus from causing disease. The virus, like its cousin Ebola, causes a haemorrhagic disease. Though outbreaks are rare, combating Marburg virus is a high priority, partly because each outbreak gives it chances to adapt to spread more readily between humans.
Tom Geisbert at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland and colleagues infected macaque monkeys with Marburg virus and half an hour later gave them a vaccine known to prevent disease if given to macaques before infection. It contained a different, weakened virus carrying the gene for a surface protein of Marburg and saved the infected monkeys.
The half-hour delay was chosen as the time it would take to treat a lab worker infected with Marburg in a 鈥渘eedle-stick鈥� accident (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68546-2). 鈥淭he natural disease develops more slowly,鈥� Geisbert says, 鈥渟o the vaccine could probably be given even later to exposed family members and medical workers during natural outbreaks.鈥�
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Last year in Angola, in the biggest Marburg outbreak on record, 374 people got the disease, and 329 died. Marburg and Ebola are also considered potential bioweapons, and the resulting boom in biodefence research has increased the risk of lab infections. Two lab workers, in the US and Russia, accidentally infected themselves with Ebola last year, and the Russian died. Geisbert says he now plans to test a similar vaccine for Ebola.
