The conclusion in this article that it supports the index case (2 year old) as due to playing with insectivourous bats is terribly flawed. The authors formally stated (correctly) that bushmeat was not the source (20-30% of bat bushmeat consumed in the DRC is from infected regions of West Africa and no cases were transmitted via this route-personal communication).
However, This statement from the article, “No EBOV RNA was detected in any of the PCR‐tested bat samples. Attempts to demonstrate the presence of IgG antibodies against Ebola viruses were inconclusive (data not shown). Further serological investigations to determine whether these bats were exposed to an Ebola virus will be required,” is evidence that “Exposure to fruit bats is common in the region, but the index case may have been infected by playing in a hollow tree housing a colony of insectivorous free‐tailed bats (Mops condylurus)” is a real stretch of bias and canno be made from the information provided in this article.
My opinion is that the conclusion should have reported that, although handling of potentially infected bats in Guinea could have resulted in this route as the zoonotic transmission in the index case, there is no evidence that any of the bats studied in the index case region showed any prior or current evidence as a host reservoir and unlikely to have been the transmission event. Therefore, the handling and/or consumption of infected bat is highly unlikely to be the cause of zoonotic transmission in the index case in this outbreak.
The article link is provided below for additional comments.
http://embomolmed.embopress.org/…/early/2014/12/29/emmm.201…
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