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An experimental vaccine for Ebola has been developed by the World Health Organization and has displayed a 100% success rate on its trials in Guinea.
"It's the first vaccine for which efficacy has been shown," said Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, a WHO assistant director-general and the study's lead author.
The vaccine was distributed to 5,837 people last year in Guinea, according to the Lancet medical journal. Within 10 days, all participants were free of the virus; they were followed up on for 84 days. It has proven to be nearly free of major side-effects (minor side-effects included headaches, fatigue, and muscle pain, but what doesn't), except for 80 people who had severe problems, only 2 of which could accurately be linked to the vaccine. All recovered without complications.
Other treatments are still under study, and other strains of Ebola such as Sudan still need a vaccine.
Sources: The Lancet Al Jazeera NY Times
(Score: 3, Informative) by Joe on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:00PM
Stick to the Lancet article since it is the primary research article and there may be things lost in popular press translation.
The prespecified primary outcome was a laboratory confirmed case of Ebola virus disease with onset 10 days or more from [vaccination] [...] The evidence from randomised and non-randomised clusters and the fact no cases of Ebola virus disease occurred 10 or more days after vaccination (through the 84 days follow-up period and from the indefinite surveillance system throughout the epidemic period)
The primary outcome was disease after 10+ days of vaccination, since the appearance of disease earlier than that would mean that the vaccine didn't have enough time to induce immunity. In the immediate vaccination arm, there was no cases of ebolavirus disease. The group checked individual cases of those vaccinated to 84 days, but the continued public health surveillance (that was independently looking for any ebolavirus disease) did not identify any additional cases of disease in the vaccinated groups.
The total numbers were "5837 individuals in total received the vaccine (5643 adults and 194 children)". The exposure level was the same initially, since it was randomized (one group of 2119 and another of 2041), but after efficacy had been established the vaccination was made immediately available to the rest.
The vaccine seems to have been in development since at least 2002 (and the pseudotyping strategy much before that), but the ebolavirus outbreak seemed to put a lot of pressure on governments to allow fast-tracking of treatments (such as this and ZMapp).
- Joe
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/196/Supplement_2/S404 [oxfordjournals.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 27 2016, @11:19PM
The vaccine seems to have been in development since at least 2002 (and the pseudotyping strategy much before that), but the ebolavirus outbreak seemed to put a lot of pressure on governments to allow fast-tracking of treatments (such as this and ZMapp).
Maybe this implies, on top of everything else, that fast-tracking medical research should be the norm rather than the exception?
(Score: 2) by nethead on Tuesday December 27 2016, @11:52PM
Maybe this implies, on top of everything else, that fast-tracking life saving medical research should be the norm rather than the exception?
FIFY.
We don't need to fast track yet another baldness cure.
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @11:56PM
I don't remember what happened with ZMapp, but remember when the original paper came out it was BS too. IIRC, unblinded technicians euthanized monkeys according to subjective and poorly described criteria. The primary outcome was survival of the monkeys! Then there is this study: They gave the subjects a substance that suppresses ebola symptoms (and has also been proposed to "cure" ebola) after the vaccination, then only looked at data for the next 1.5 weeks.
If the medical field is still struggling with basic concepts like blinding and making sure you are measuring the correct thing, I don't think more money should be thrown at it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @11:59PM
No idea where 1.5 weeks came from, that should be 4 weeks.
(Score: 2) by Joe on Wednesday December 28 2016, @12:54AM
It is the norm (at least in the US) for disease with very low survival rates. It is hard to give a patient something that is worse than Ebola or stage 4 cancer, so many clinical trials start in patients with little hope of survival. Drug companies are sometimes hesitant to do this (or compassionate use) for fear of investors getting cold feet when they see patients dying (they would've died anyway but the drug still didn't work).
"Do no harm" is an easy standard to meet when the patient is dying.
- Joe
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 28 2016, @09:56AM
"Do no harm" is an easy standard to meet when the patient is dying.
The patient is always dying. Not of male pattern baldness as the other poster noted, but everyone dies of something.