Comparing Ebola and HIV

 What does Ebola have to do with HIV disease? More than meets the eye. Both are classed as newly emerging diseases, but naturally there are similarities and differences. The Ebola and HIV viruses both originated in the hot zone of equatorial Africa. Ebola was discovered in 1976 by the Belgian epidemiologist/microbiologist Dr Peter Piot near the Ebola River in what was then Zaire. There are five variants of Ebola virus, four of them quite deadly, one apparently not deadly at all. The current outbreak is the Ebola-Zaire type. Dr Piot later became director of UNAIDS, the United Nations Aids agency located next to the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Every few years Ebola virus jumps the species barrier into humans and starts a small epidemic killing up to a few hundred people. Although Ebola also infects other forest mammals from time to time, its host reservoir is the African fruit bat that flies over a wide range in Central Africa. The jump in species from bats to humans usually takes place through hunting and preparation of “bush meat”. The current epidemic started with the infection of a two-year-old kid named Emile Ouamouno in Meliandou, Guinea. His father hunts bush meat and fruit bats are considered a delicacy in that area. But according to the epidemiologists who traced the disease to its source, Emile evidently contracted the virus by playing in a hollowed-out tree where a number of fruit bats lived. Thus, he probably contracted the disease by either touching a sick or dead fruit bat or from contact with fruit bat droppings that contained the virus.

HIV disease (Aids) was first reported to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) by Dr Michael Gottleib who observed it in patients at Harbor-UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles, California in June 1981. HIV jumped the species barrier from chimpanzees to humans approximately a century ago in the huge tropical rain forest that spans the border of Cameroon and Gabon. That species jump also occurred through hunting and preparation of bush meat. As with Ebola, HIV jumped from chimps to humans many times before it became permanently established and eventually spread across the globe. Just as American pioneers ate deer, squirrel, possum and buffalo – American bush meat – Africans hunt and eat what is readily available in their forests. That includes birds, rodents, small deer, monkeys and chimpanzees. To hungry villagers, meat is meat. The reason scientists know HIV originated this way is that chimpanzee simian immunodeficiency virus, SIVc, is genetically almost identical to HIV. Since viral genetics mutate at a predictable rate, geneticists can measure precisely how different HIV is from SIVc and determine it jumped species approximately a hundred years ago. By far the greatest diversity of HIV genetic subgroups, called clades, exist in humans in the Cameroon-Gabon region. That is why so scientists can confirm HIV originated there. Although there are approximately eighteen subtypes of HIV, only three or four of these genotypes have spread beyond the Cameroon-Gabon area. These include clades A, B and C, named alphabetically in the sequence they were discovered.

Ebola and HIV are also similar since, like most viruses, they genetically encode proteins that require selenium atoms to construct. Like architectural plans, viral genes determine how a virus is constructed, what chemical elements it needs, what cells it infects, how fast it replicates, and eventually how it makes you sick. Viruses are classed into different families. HIV is a lentivirus or “slow virus”. It takes many years to kill a person. Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever virus, causing high fever, vomiting and diarrhea. Along with its closest relative, Marburg virus, it is a filovirus, named after their long filament-like shape. Ebola has two outstanding features. First it encodes several selenium containing proteins that require a large number of selenium atoms to construct. Second, it replicates extremely fast. That combination devastates the immune system – and patients infected with Ebola. HIV and Ebola kill using the same strategy. They both attack the immune system to steal its selenium – the golden element of life and health.

Selenium in an essential trace element that is found in every cell of the human body and in almost all plant and animal cells. It is essential to health and life down to the lowest level – even for most bacteria and viruses. Selenium is the keystone component of the enzyme glutathione-peroxidase, the “universal” antioxidant that keeps every cell in the body clean, healthy and detoxified. Performing the same function for the whole body as it does for individual cells selenium is concentrated in the cells and organs of the immune system. Those include immune white blood cells, the thymus, spleen, lymph nodes, liver and kidneys. HIV infection attacks the immune system, infecting CD4 cells and slowly draining selenium from the body. It picks up speed as it gradually subverts the antiviral protective effect that selenium exerts within the immune system. Overtime this loss of selenium generates a negative feedback loop that causes immunity to decline and health to worsen. On the other hand, Ebola voraciously depletes selenium at such a rapid pace it achieves within ten days what, unsuppressed, HIV takes a decade to accomplish. Ebola drains selenium from the immune system so fast it simply crashes. HIV gradually dismantles the immune system brick by brick. Ebola dynamites it to bits.

When you see a sick Ebola patient it is hard not to compare them to a terminal Aids patient. Years ago, I suggested renaming the acronym Aids to “Acquired Immune Deficiency of Selenium”. That describes it much more accurately than using the vague term “syndrome”. Giving Aids a name that describes it more precisely provides a better understanding of the disease and how to treat it. Ebola is Aids squared - HIV on steroids. Both diseases represent the collapse of the immune system due to the loss of selenium, one slowly, the other quite rapidly. Because selenium is the essence of the immune system, it is also the essence of health. This trace element found everywhere in nature could be called the essence of life – from the viral, to the cellular, to the human level. For animals including humans, and most plants, selenium is as essential as water. The amazing thing is that with either a terminal AIDS patient or an Ebola patient, if you administer the correct dosage of selenium, within one day the patient starts to feel better and within two days the patient starts to feel stronger. It is remarkable how similar the reaction of an Ebola and a late stage Aids patient is to the administration of selenium. Giving the correct dosage of selenium to an Aids or Ebola patient is like giving water to a wilted flower. All three quickly perk up. Within one week the bedridden Aids patient is usually walking again. By that same time most Ebola patients know they will survive their brush with death. Not all, but most do. Of course recovery only takes place if the patient can be reached before their organs start to shut down in the last few days or Aids of Ebola.

Understanding the interactions between viruses, the immune system and selenium is one key to developing successful strategies to overcome viral diseases. Almost all viruses need selenium and they “mine” it from the cells they infect, just like humans mine coal for energy. Replacing the selenium viruses steal with supplement tablets helps restore the health of individual cells, the immune system, and with it, a person’s health. For instance when influenza strikes, within three days the level of selenium in the cells lining the lungs falls by 40%. When a person uses selenium tablets to treat influenza that will lessen flu symptoms and hasten recovery. It is not a cure but it provides significant benefit. In cases of more deadly strains of flu like H5-N1, taking selenium tablets reduces the chance of dying. By boosting the body’s immune defenses, selenium supplements also reduce the chance of becoming infected with the flu. A person can contract the flu virus, but a strong immune system may prevent the virus from taking hold, suppressing the flu before it ever gets started.

Both viruses and bacteria pre-date human existence by billions of years. Their evolutionary strategy includes grabbing the selenium they need to exist, reproduce, and overcome immune defenses. Since selenium is the key element of the body’s antiviral defenses, it is as if enemy viruses undermine people’s immune defense protection by stealing stones from the immune castle’s wall. There is an evolutionary battle going on between the immune system and viral competitors for the golden element of life and health. The easiest way to overcome that deadly viral aggressor is with – selenium supplements.

The HIV virus infects CD4 cells and macrophage, “big eater” cells. These two types of white blood cells along with the antibody producing B-cells are the most critical cells in the immune system. Different viruses attack different cells because those viruses possess unique keys to particular receptors that allow them to break and enter into those cells. HIV only infects cells that have the receptor “key hole” on their surface that HIV can attach to and unlock. Unfortunately, Ebola seems to be a master locksmith. It is able to infect many types of cells. The cells on the palms of one’s hand have evolved to be unusually resistant to viral infection. It is a sign of Ebola’s infectiousness that just touching a dead body can transmit the disease. Ebola is infectious but it is not contagious. It is not transmitted through the air.

While most viruses need selenium, and there are thousands of different viruses, Ebola is a true selenophiliac, a “lover of selenium”. It craves selenium because it needs so many selenium atoms to form its constituent proteins. Because Ebola replicates at such a rapid rate, it needs a lot of selenium to keep it going. While 60% of the selenium in the body is stored in the muscles, including the heart; the body’s highest concentration of selenium is found in the cells and organs of the immune system. Those immune organs include the liver, spleen, thymus, kidneys and the lymph nodes. Just like HIV, Ebola attacks the immune system to get at its selenium. That is why the liver and kidneys are so damaged in EVD. Those extremely selenium rich organs lie in the direct path of destruction by Ebola. Supplementation with high dose selenium gives the liver and kidneys a fighting chance. If they go, the patient goes too.

The thyroid gland, residing right above the heart, has the highest concentration of selenium of any organ or gland in the body. The thyroid gland helps regulate most of the other organs and glands in the body. It helps control body temperature and the production of CD4 white blood cells that originate in the bone marrow and exert control over the immune system. The thymus gland also has a very high selenium content. It is also critical in the production f CD4 cells. If Ebola is a selenophiliac, its tastiest treats would be the thyroid and thymus. By attacking these two glands it would disrupt the functioning of most glands and organs in the body and slow production of CD4 cells to a crawl. CD4 cells control immune function and would normally help defend against the virus. This is exactly what appears to happen. Since CD4 cells only have the life span of a house fly, about four days, once those cells run out your immune system loses control. It goes haywire and the body is completely unprotected from myriad microorganisms (germs) that always surround it. Given half a chance, those germs are out to get you. This is their chance. That is how HIV kills its victims and how Ebola carries it victims away too. While HIV packs a punch to the immune system, Ebola packs a one-two punch to the immune system plus the vital organs, especially those of the immune system, the liver and kidneys.

There are many similarities between HIV and Ebola, but Ebola has its own particular characteristics. It overwhelms the immune system so fast and furiously that, unlike with HIV, there is usually little chance to recover from the initial assault. Without medical attention only about 10% of infected people survive – those with very strong immune systems and perhaps those lucky few with high selenium diets. With advanced “supportive care” such as that valiantly provided by humanitarian organizations like Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF), approximately 45% of patients survive. When high dose selenium is added to basic supportive care approximately 70-75% of patients can survive. If a combination of other antiviral drugs are added to that combination, it is conceivable up to 90% of those infected will survive. Unfortunately, for three reasons it is difficult to see how survival rates will ever exceed more than about 90%. First, once Ebola virus disease becomes apparent it progresses rapidity and if immediate action is not taken it can be too late. Second, EVD’s initial symptoms mimic many other common tropical diseases like malaria, Lassa fever, the flu or HIV, so it is often mistaken for something else and action is not taken as promptly as it needs to be. Finally many people are reluctant to seek medical help, sometimes due to the stigma attached to the disease, sometimes due to fear or ignorance, or just plain stubbornness.

It is an epic shame that international health authorities have not recommended the use of selenium against EVD or organized comparative clinical trials of existing safe and effective anti-viral drugs that have a high probability of successfully treating this devastating disease. Their reluctance to conduct systematic trials of existing antivirals has contributed greatly to the death toll in this epidemic.