This is encouraging.
Texas scientists who developed an effective vaccine for the deadly Ebola virus are now reporting promising results with new medication to better treat full-blown cases of the disease.
In a laboratory study published this week, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston showed a single injection of two antibodies successfully treated monkeys infected with all strains of the virus, a significant advance on current treatment options which only cover one strain and require multiple injections.
“This medication would give doctors an advantage in situations where we don’t know which strain of Ebola is going to pop up next,” said Thomas Geisbert, a UTMB professor of microbiology and immunology and the study’s primary investigator. “The fear now, with all our eggs in one basket, is we’ll get burned with the outbreak of a strain there’s no protection against.”
Geisbert said the study results, published Wednesday in Cell Host & Microbe, suggest the medication would be effective even if Ebola viruses evolve over time, and Larry Zeitlin, president of Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., the drug manufacturer, said it should “reduce the burden on health-care workers in the field during outbreaks.”
[…]
New medications are increasingly being used in the Congo to treat Ebola, most notably ZMapp, which was initially deployed late in the first outbreak. But those medications work only against the Zaire strain and require multiple injections, a challenge in Third World settings. ZMapp, for instance, must be given three times, each a few days apart, and by infusion which takes up to five hours. The single infusion of MBP134 only takes minutes.
“That’s a huge advantage in chaotic outbreaks or reactive settings where it’s often difficult to track down and identify patients to give them a second dose,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital.
Hotez added that “of course, all of this needs to be confirmed in human clinical trials.” He said the current outbreak in the Congo “looks like a good time for such an evaluation.”
See here and here for some background. I don’t have anything to add here, I just thought we could all use a bit of positive news.