Ebola protein explains deadly mystery
By John Travis
A gruesomely detailed account of a 1989 Ebola virus outbreak in a monkey house in Reston, Va., terrified millions of readers of Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone (1994, Random House). Ebola, normally found in Africa, kills people with chilling efficiency most of the time. Yet the strain that surfaced in Reston spared workers who became infected even as it slew monkeys.
A research team based at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., may now have uncovered the key mechanism by which Ebola destroys cells in blood vessels and elsewhere, bringing about massive bleeding and other symptoms. The scientists may also have unraveled why Ebola didn’t prove fatal to people in the Reston facility.