A Cure for Ebola? Two New Treatments Prove Highly Effective in Congo
In a development that transforms the fight against Ebola, two experimental treatments are working so well that they will now be offered to all patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo, scientists announced on Monday.
The antibody-based treatments are quite powerful — "Now we can say that 90 percent can come out of treatment cured," one scientist said — that they raise hopes that the disastrous epidemic in eastern Congo can soon be stopped.
Offering patients a real cure "may contribute to them feeling more comfortable about seeking care early," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who joined the World Health Organization and the Congolese government in making the announcement.
[...] The new experimental treatments, known as REGN-EB3 and mAb-114, are both cocktails of monoclonal antibodies that are infused intravenously into the blood. Antibodies are Y-shaped proteins normally made by the immune system that clump onto the outer shells of viral particles, preventing them from entering cells. The two new treatments are synthetic versions grown under laboratory conditions.
Also at STAT News and The Guardian.
[Ed note: Updated to include a submission from Bytram after the break]
Ebola is Now Curable. Here's How the New Treatments Work:
Amid unrelenting chaos and violence, scientists and doctors in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been running a clinical trial of new drugs to try to combat a year-long Ebola outbreak. On Monday, the trial's cosponsors at the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health announced that two of the experimental treatments appear to dramatically boost survival rates.
While an experimental vaccine previously had been shown to shield people from catching Ebola, the news marks a first for people who already have been infected. "From now on, we will no longer say that Ebola is incurable," said Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of the Institut National de Recherche Biomedicale in the DRC, which has overseen the trial's operations on the ground.
Megan Molteni covers DNA technologies, medicine, and genetic privacy for WIRED.
Starting last November, patients in four treatment centers in the country's east, where the outbreak is at its worst, were randomly assigned to receive one of four investigational therapies—either an antiviral drug called remdesivir or one of three drugs that use monoclonal antibodies. Scientists concocted these big, Y-shaped proteins to recognize the specific shapes of invading bacteria and viruses and then recruit immune cells to attack those pathogens. One of these, a drug called ZMapp, is currently considered the standard of care during Ebola outbreaks. It had been tested and used during the devastating Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014, and the goal was to see if those other drugs could outperform it. But preliminary data from the first 681 patients (out of a planned 725) showed such strong results that the trial has now been stopped.
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According to Bruce Lee of Forbes magazine, the world now has an actual vaccine effective against Ebola.
It's official. We now have a real Ebola vaccine. Not a kind-of-almost-sort-of-there vaccine. Not an experimental-use vaccine. Not a vaccine just for macaques. No, this is a vaccine that the European Commission has just approved for use in humans, the first of its kind.
It is worth noting that there are four variants of Ebola that infect humans, however the one this vaccine "Ervebo" is effective against is the deadly Zaire Ebola virus.
Ervebo is a genetically engineered, replication-competent, attenuated live vaccine. Data from clinical trials and compassionate use programs have shown that Ervebo protects against Ebola virus disease in humans following a single dose administration.
The vaccine has been tested on approximately 16,000 people so far with very good results
Health officials have been using the vaccine on an experimental basis to try to control Ebola outbreaks that have been going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) [...] the war-torn DRC hasn't been the easiest place to test the vaccine:
Nevertheless, researchers managed to test the efficacy of the vaccine in the country. As the WHO reported in April, this vaccine had an estimated protective efficacy of 97.5% in field studies there. That would mean if a hundred people vaccinated were exposed to the virus, less than three would end up getting infected. That's a remarkably high efficacy. After all, nothing in life is 100%. However, keep in mind that the efficacy of a vaccine also depends on how many people around you are vaccinated
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently reviewing Merck's application for approval of the vaccine.
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Two Effective Treatments for Ebola Announced
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 13 2019, @03:26AM (2 children)
Well, ZMapp was always total BS so this does not mean that the other drugs actually help the patient:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/independent-monitoring-board-recommends-early-termination-ebola-therapeutics-trial-drc-because-favorable-results-two-four-candidates [nih.gov]
This is where the scam is introduced:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03719586 [clinicaltrials.gov]
None of the ZMapp trials were blinded, and wouldn't surprise me if that drug was actually making things worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 13 2019, @06:14AM (1 child)
Thanks for those. But a 90% survival rate beats untreated, for this outbreak, I thought? So doesn't that figure alone mean that something here is working?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 13 2019, @07:50AM
There is no real control group in this study. Survival is heavily influenced by whatever supportive care is available so unless that 90% number comes from a population receiving similar care it is not comparable. Where is the source for the 90% value?