Many Ebola Survivors Face Long-Term Brain Health Issues

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Many Ebola survivors face long-term brain health issues: Study

by Emma Tiller 25 Feb 2016

Though Ebola outbreak has been declared over, its survivors continue to struggle with long-term problems. A new study has found that many Ebola survivors are witnessing brain symptoms that last longer even after the symptoms of this fatal infection fade away.

Study’s lead author Dr. Lauren Bowen, from the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said that they have assessed the health of 82 Ebola survivors in Liberia, one of the three West African countries facing crisis in the 2014 Ebola pandemic.

Most of patients, whose average age was 35 years, faced some neurological symptoms six months after they were infected with the virus. Common problems included weakness, headache, memory loss, depressed mood, muscle pain, tremors, irregular reflexes and abnormal eye movements. Among them, there were two survivors who were suicidal and one suffered hallucinations.

“More than 28,600 people were infected with Ebola in West Africa during the outbreak. Of that number, 11,300 died. We wanted to find out more about possible continued long-term brain health problems for the more than 17,000 survivors of the infection”, affirmed Bowen.

Bowen said that it is important to know how the virus will continue to affect the brain in the long-term. The researchers said that one of the notable things was most of the victims were young, which makes it bit unexpected that they have suffered from such brain health complications.

Bowen said that many people have suffered memory loss to such an extent that it has affected their daily living. In fact, some people they would not be able to resume their daily routine of going to school or normal jobs and face terrible sleeping issues. It seems that Ebola has not left them.

The BBC News notes that, Dr Lauren Bowen, from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, told the BBC: "It was pretty striking, this is a young population of patients, and we wouldn't expect to have seen these sorts of problems.

"When people had memory loss, it tended to affect their daily living, with some feeling they couldn't return to school or normal jobs, some had terrible sleeping problems. "Ebola hasn't gone away for these people."

In other news LiveScience News reported, although experts recently declared the world's largest Ebola outbreak over, many people who were infected with the virus are still experiencing neurologic problems, according to a new study.

"While an end to the outbreak has been declared, these survivors are still struggling with long-term problems," study author Dr. Lauren Bowen, a neurologist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a statement.

In a statement provided to HeraldScotland News, John Oxford, emeritus professor of virology at the University of London, said that the Scots nurse’s case is ‘probably the most investigated on the planet’ and is viewed by experts as a pioneer case.

Ms Cafferkey, who contracted Ebola in 2014, was flown by RAF Hercules from Glasgow to the Royal Free Hospital in London yesterday to receive treatment for a ‘late complication’ from the virus. It is the third time she has been hospitalised since contracting Ebola.