Where we are in the battle against Ebola

With hundreds of cases of Ebola in Africa, a panel of World Health Organization (WHO) experts has declared it is ethical to use experimental drugs in this current outbreak.

What is the current treatment for Ebola?

There is no licensed treatment or vaccine for the Ebola virus. Hospital treatment is based on giving patients intravenous fluids to stop dehydration and antibiotics to fight infections. Strict medical infection control and rapid burial are regarded as the best means of prevention.

What about experimental treatments?

Several experimental treatments for Ebola are being developed, which have shown promising results in monkeys when given up to five days after infection. However, they have not been tested in more than a handful of people and none has been licensed.

  • Two U.S. aid workers had been given an experimental treatment, known as Zmapp, with “apparently encouraging” signs in one of them, said Prof Tom Solomon, director of the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic infections. The treatment is a mixture of three monoclonal antibodies that attack proteins on the surface of the virus.
  • Another experimental drug, developed by Tekmira Pharmaceuticalsin Canada, has been tested on monkeys and in a handful of healthy human volunteers. The drug, TKM-Ebola, is designed to target strands of genetic material of the virus (RNA). The drug interrupts the genetic code of the virus and prevents it from making disease-causing proteins. A small early safety trial on a small number of human volunteers was put on hold last month when regulators requested further safety data. The company is hopeful that it may get the go-ahead to continue the trial and is willing to make the drug available.
  • The US..-based pharmaceutical company, Sarepta Therapeutics, has developed a similar RNA treatment. It has been tested in healthy human volunteers in early safety trials, but has never been tried in a human patient.

Read the full, original story: Ebola: Experimental drugs and vaccines

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