"The human body holds several effective hiding spots that some of the world's nastiest viruses have discovered like the eyes and the testes that are beyond the reach of the immune system. It's here that submicroscopic viral RNA can safely linger. Often the human hosts have no idea. They'd fallen ill, then appeared to beat the virus. Their blood tested negative. They show no symptoms."
"But that hidden virus is capable of springing back into action. It can emerge from hiding either sickening the original host or slipping into semen or breast milk and infecting someone new. Which viruses have mastered this technique? A number of notorious ones from Zika to measles to highly deadly viruses like Nipah, Marburg and Lassa fever. And the virus that terrified the world in 2014: Ebola."
""Almost all the outbreaks recently maybe not every single one of them but the vast majority are traced back to a previous outbreak," says Dr. Elizabeth Higgs, who is with the Division of Clinical Research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases."
Some viruses hide in immune-privileged body sites such as the eyes and testes, where submicroscopic viral RNA can persist undetected. Survivors can appear recovered with negative blood tests and no symptoms while virus fragments linger. Dormant virus can reactivate, causing illness in the original host or transmitting through semen or breast milk to new hosts. Pathogens capable of such persistence include Zika, measles, Nipah, Marburg, Lassa fever and Ebola. Genetic sequencing of outbreaks shows many recent Ebola flare-ups in the Democratic Republic of Congo trace back to human survivors rather than animal reservoirs, making persistent infection a research priority.
Read at www.npr.org
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