Scientists at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have conducted a detailed blood sample analysis of Ebola patients that is shedding light on the roles a molecular pathway and microvesicles play in both the virus and potential treatments.
The study turned to lipids, comparing those of the infected survivors (11) with those who died from it (9) and those who were never infected (10). Specifically, patients were drawn from Sierra Leone, where an Ebola outbreak raged between 2014 and 2016, leaving more than 11,000 dead behind. From the lipids studied, the scientists identified 423 separate molecular species critical to the daily operation of cell membranes.
“We have a lot of information about lipids; now we need to understand what those lipids are telling us. They have great stories to tell,” Jennifer Kyle, PNNL scientist and first author of the study, said. “Lipid levels are one way of understanding exactly what a virus is doing in its environment – whether in early Earth history or in the body during an infection.”
Infected survivors were found to have had a much higher number of PC lipids, and those numbers grew as they fought. The dead had higher levels of PS lipids, spurring their cells more quickly to death as the Ebola virus used them to replicate.
PC lipids come from a favorite Ebola target — the liver — and operate thanks to a core nutrient known as choline. As such, scientists theorize that choline supplementation could improve liver function in the infected. On the other hand, PS lipids largely revolve around the spleen, liver, and kidneys, and associate with microvesicles, which can harm patients. This, in turn, led scientists to theorize that aggressive blood filtration could remove these microvesicles and aid defense.
The preliminary results of the findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.