Science Policy Around the Web – January 15, 2016

By: Amanda Whiting, Ph.D.

photo credit: Microbe World via photopin cc

West Africa Ebola epidemic

WHO declares Ebola outbreak over

On Thursday, January 14, 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) marked the end of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa at a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, by declaring Liberia free of Ebola. This declaration means that at least 42 days (two 21-day incubation cycles of the virus) have passed since the last confirmed case of Ebola in Liberia tested negative for the virus twice. The other two countries most affected by the outbreak, Sierra Leone and Guinea, were declared Ebola-free in early November and late December 2015, respectively. This announcement marks the first time that all known chains of viral transmission in these three countries have been stopped. “Detecting and breaking every chain of transmission has been a monumental achievement,” said WHO director-general Margaret Chan in a news release. The final cost of this epidemic has been estimated at 11 300 people killed out of 28 500 infected, making it one of the worst international health disasters in history.

While Rick Brennan, directed of emergency risk management and humanitarian action at WHO stated that “today is a good day,” the risk of virus reemerging is a very real threat, and he stressed the need for continued vigilance. Liberia was first declared Ebola-free in May 2015 but has twice encountered new flare-ups of the virus, with the latest in November 2015. The risk of Ebola causing new flare-ups comes from the fact that Ebola can persist in some tissues and bodily fluids of survivors for months, such as in the eyeball fluid of one survivor, and in the semen of some survivors up to a year after infection.

With the outbreak now officially over, scientists and public health officials are looking at what lessons can and should be learned from it. The most important lesson, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and public face of the small US-based outbreak, is the need to strengthen health care systems in low- and middle-income countries. “If there was a system to have recognized and stopped the outbreak that began with the child in Guinea in December, 2013, we might have avoided the explosive outbreaks in Sierra Leone and Liberia.”(Kai Kupferschmidt, ScienceMag.org, Erika Check Hayden, NatureNews)

Embryonic Research

U.K. researcher details proposal for CRISPR editing of human embryos

A researcher in the United Kingdom, Kathy Niakan, of the Francis Crick Institute in London, has proposed using CRISPR genetic editing on embryos to study genes involved in early human development. Dr. Niakan previously applied to the U.K.’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) in September 2015 to renew her existing license to use human embryos in research, and to extend that license to include CRISPR editing. This proposal has just come up for review by HFEA, and Niakan met with journalists from the Science Media Centre on January 13^th to talk about her research and proposal in advance of any decision. Her research currently uses human embryos that are left over from in vitro fertilization attempts and donated for research. After their use, these embryos are destroyed when they are 7 days old. Niakan hopes to use CRISPR to knock out genes known to play a role in human development when the embryos are single cells at only 1 day old, and study how that affects their development into blastocytes, a 5-day old embryonic structure. While Niakan speculated that research of this type might one day lead to improved treatments for infertility, for the near future her research involves one narrow goal – to determine what specific genes do in blastocytes. Whether or not she will be able to pursue these studies still depends on the near-future decision of the HFEA. (Erik Stokstad, ScienceInsider)

Public Heath Recommendations

Eggs are okay again

The final version of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans was announced on January 7, 2016 in a joint press release from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). One of the more interesting points that many have jumped on was the fact that the 2015 guideline does not include a limit to cholesterol intake, and instead just states that “individuals should eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible.” Previous guidelines had recommended that Americans restrict their daily cholesterol intake to no more than 300 mg. This new governmental stance on cholesterol is more in line with current research and the findings of other nations. This does not mean that high blood levels of cholesterol are no longer bad – high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol have been clearly linked to heart disease. However, the contribution of foods high in cholesterol (such as eggs) to overall blood cholesterol levels may be overshadowed by the amount of cholesterol produced by a person’s own liver. As such, the amount of cholesterol one consumes becomes an individual’s personal decision based on their own medical history and situation. As with many aspects of health care, personalized nutrition may become the future of nutrition science. (Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post)

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