How to survive Ebola; recent news of an outbreak once again puts the virus strain on the forefront.

How to survive an Ebola outbreak, given the virus lethality? The virus first caught public attention in 2000, when it spread through African communities like wildfire. A film was even made on the premise of a US epidemic ("Outbreak") with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role.

It appears truth is following on the footsteps of fiction, as a potential outbreak threatens the US. At present, the cure for the disease remains a mystery, although there are plenty of cases involving people who've survived it.

Recent studies suggest the isolated cases where patients survive the strain may be attributed to their biological profiles, though. It turns out some people have a higher survival rate than others.

There hasn't been any case of an outbreak in the US, according to the CDC. "Ebola has not caused disease in the United States. In 1990, several researchers in Virginia and Texas became infected with a type of Ebola virus from contact with imported monkeys, the CDC says. However, the type of Ebola in these cases, now called Ebola-Reston, did not cause symptoms in humans, although it was fatal in monkeys." (livescience.com)

Derek Gatherer of Lancaster University profiles people with a higher survival rate against the virus; some know how to survive Ebola by default, with tolerance built into their system. "The patients that survive it best are the ones who don't get such a bad [immune] deficiency."

"When a person becomes infected with Ebola, the virus depletes the body's immune cells, which defend against infection. But if a person's immune system can stand up to this initial attack - meaning their immune cells are not as depleted in the first stages of infection - then studies suggest they are more likely to survive the disease."

Samples are currently being collected on the field, as well as from survivors, then studied for clues on how to survive the Ebola virus, or better yet, how to fend it off (yahoo.com).