Catchy, Easy to Dance to: Marburg

This is a fairly simplistic description so, if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend the book “The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston. The descriptions of what a filovirus can do to the human body are fascinating and not to mention rather disturbing. (Basically, think of any number of X-files episodes where your insides are slowly liquefied). To give you an idea of how powerful Marburg can be, on the third day of a Marburg infection, there are fewer than 200 viruses in a drop of blood. However by the eighth day, there are 5 million.

“While viruses such as Marburg or Ebola are certainly terrifying, there are in actuality more menacing diseases lurking elsewhere in the world.”

Marburg symptoms first appear as rather innocuous generic fever, chills, headache, and muscle pains. About five days later, a rash may occur. Then, nausea, vomiting, a sore throat, chest, and abdominal pain occur. And this is just the beginning of the agonizing pain that is yet to come. Symptoms become more and more severe, as well as painful, and eventually lead to severe weight loss, delirium, shock, liver failure, massive hemorrhaging, and multi-organ dysfunction.

Marburg, like Ebola, is spread through contact with bodily fluids, such as blood and sweat, as well as other “bodily excretions” (use your imagination). Victims are most contagious in the final stages of the disease and a cough can be deadly if a few drops land in an eye, mouth, or open wound. Even scarier, the virus has been known to survive for as long as several days on contaminated surfaces. Once Marburg is inside the bloodstream, it is the beginning of the end for most victims.

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