Clinical presentation of filoviral disease

Abstract

The clinical definition of filoviral disease is based on information gathered from the few large outbreaks that have occurred over the past four decades⁴⁸. The description of MVD is based primarily on clinical data collected during the initial outbreak that occurred simultaneously in Germany and Yugoslavia in 1967. Certainly, the clinical description of MVD would have been more comprehensive had current methods been available at that time. The latest MARV emergences in Durba and Watsa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1998–2000, and in Uíge, Angola, 2004–2005, provided valuable opportunities to study this disease with modern methods. Unfortunately, only a few reports touching on the clinical presentation of patients during the outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been published to date [270, 364, 2571]. In contrast to the clinical manifestation of MVD, ZEVD was well defined during the 1995 outbreak in Kikwit, Zaire, as reflected in the large number of related publications.

Clinical and pathological data have been collected through a wide variety of large studies. Individual studies often provided only a few additional details to those already known and described. Therefore, Chapters 6 and 7 consist of rather long paragraphs, sometimes with numerous references added to their ends. Both chapters are more descriptive than summarizing. This is because most animal studies were performed with different filovirus isolates and varying inoculation doses, and by different inoculation routes in different animals or animal subspecies and strains. Therefore, rather than mixing the data to make an appearance of consensus, the data are presented separately, in individual subchapters.