Human Infection Due to Ebola Virus, Subtype Côte d'Ivoire: Clinical and Biologic Presentation

In November 1994 after 15 years of epidemiologic silence, Ebola virus reemerged in Africa and, for the first time, in West Africa. In Côte d'Ivoire, a 34-year-old female ethologist was infected while conducting a necropsy on a wild chimpanzee. Eight days later, the patient developed a syndrome that did not respond to antimalarial drugs and was characterized by high fever, headache, chills, myalgia, and cough. The patient had abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and a macular rash, and was repatriated to Switzerland. The patient suffered from prostration and weight loss but recovered without sequelae. Laboratory findings included aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase activity highly elevated, thrombocytopenia, lymphopenia, and, subsequently, neutrophilia. A new subtype of Ebola was isolated from the patient's blood on days 4 and 8. No serologic conversion was detected among contact persons in Côte d'Ivoire (n = 22) or Switzerland (n = 52), suggesting that infection-control precautions were satisfactory.