November 10, 2016
Bulletin interne de l'Institut Pasteur
The Ebola virus adapted to better infect humans during the 2013-2016 epidemic
An international coalition of scientists involving teams from the Institut Pasteur, has revealed that adaptive mutations to the Ebola virus occurred during the epidemic that swept across West Africa from 2013 onwards. In what remains the most devastating outbreak of this disease ever recorded, it was already known that several strains of the virus circulated at the same time. This new functional study demonstrates that some variants of the virus actually increased their ability to infect humans - to the detriment of their infectivity in bats.