Ebola virus and laboratory diagnosis in Japan

Ebola virus causes Ebola virus disease (EVD) with high case fatality rates in humans and has caused sporadic outbreaks with less than 500 cases. An EVD outbreak in West Africa, which probably started at the end of 2013, has an unprecedented large-scale with more than 20,000 cases including more than 10,000 death and is still ongoing as of May 2015. National Institute of Infectious Diseases has developed laboratory diagnostic methods of EVD to detect pathogens (genes or protein) and antibodies. The methods have been recently used for suspected cases approximately once a year before the outbreak in West Africa, but after the outbreak for 7 times within this 6 months for suspected cases coming back from 3 countries of West Africa to Japan.