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Medicine Science

Ebola Vaccine Gives 100 Percent Protection, Could Be Readily Available By 2018 (bbc.com) 72

Posted by msmash from the major-milestone dept.
According to a study published in the Lancet medical journal on Thursday, an experimental vaccine against the Ebola virus was found to be 100 percent effective. The results offer hope of better protection against the disease that ravaged West Africa in 2014, killing more than 11,000 people. From a report on BBC: A highly effective vaccine that guards against the deadly Ebola virus could be available by 2018, says the World Health Organization. Trials conducted in Guinea, one of the West African countries most affected by an outbreak of Ebola that ended this year, show it offers 100% protection. The vaccine is now being fast-tracked for regulatory approval. Manufacturer Merck has made 300,000 doses of the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine available for use should Ebola strike. GAVI, the global vaccine alliance, provided $5m for the stockpile. Results, published in The Lancet medical journal, show of nearly 6,000 people receiving the vaccine, all were free of the virus 10 days later. In a group of the same size not vaccinated, 23 later developed Ebola. Only one person who was vaccinated had a serious side effect that the researchers think was caused by the jab.
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Ebola Vaccine Gives 100 Percent Protection, Could Be Readily Available By 2018 More

Ebola Vaccine Gives 100 Percent Protection, Could Be Readily Available By 2018

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  • This will surely cause a spike in autism.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vihai ( 668734 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @02:27PM (#53544927) Homepage

    ...among anti-vaxxers :)

  • Reston Marburg (Score:4, Interesting)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @02:31PM (#53544951)

    Know that Marburg and Reston are sometimes called Ebola but are not the same as Ebola Zebov. Still what ever trick was done to find a protective antigen can likely be repeated for these. The most important aspect of this is that it can protect health workers. Treating Ebola patients in hot climates is hard to do when you have to wear so much protective gear.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah but Ebola Reston doesn't transmit to humans.

      Which is very fortunate, considering where the monkey outbreak occurred. (For the uninformed, it's named for Reston, Virginia.)

  • So we had best wait a year before doing anything with it. Until it's ready for human use you don't have a vaccine, you have a hype train.

    • Re:It's totally life saving! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tempo36 ( 2382592 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @02:50PM (#53545027)
      I can't tell which way you're being unhelpful. Are you maligning the medical establishment for not releasing it right away when it could save lives? Are you genuinely suggesting that we just shove it onto the market? Because surely you know that if it gets released and as soon as there's any hint of an adverse event that the anti-vaccer & Mercola crew will be screaming about how this is just another effort by Big Pharma to experiment on or sterilize poor African villagers who surely would have been better off dying of hemorrhagic fever. For good or bad, you have to at least look at some efficacy and safety data or you might as well be practicing homeopathy with a tincture of lead.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        The criticism is over the hype. It's totally life saving but we need another year to test that it really is life saving. So which is it, well understood enough to actually be life saving or not well understood enough and requiring more testing?

        It's totally fine for it to be a promising idea and needing more refinement, don't release frankendrugs by all means. But if it needs work, testing or any other development stage where it could turn out to be a total bust, then quit hyping it as sine qua non of new

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Let's say we're 97% sure it's wonderful and has no adverse side effects. That's good enough to jump to conclusions, but not good enough to start giving it to millions of people. Does that make sense?

          • Let's say we're 97% sure it's wonderful and has no adverse side effects. That's good enough to jump to conclusions, but not good enough to start giving it to millions of people. Does that make sense?

            This.

            Also, going from small batches in lab reactors to large scale production doesn't happen overnight. Sourcing, production, packaging, shipment, etc.

            When developing new meds we also do long(er) term safety data collection that you simply can't do without time. The testing isn't to figure out if it's life saving, the extra time is to make sure that to the best of our ability, reasonably, there isn't some safety item we're missing and to refine dosing and production to optimum levels.

            If you'd seen a lot of

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by tempo36 ( 2382592 )

          The criticism is over the hype. It's totally life saving but we need another year to test that it really is life saving. So which is it, well understood enough to actually be life saving or not well understood enough and requiring more testing?

          Both. It can be clearly life saving with regards to the disease it is meant to treat while at the same time not being studied enough to be given the stamp of approval. In pharmacology we talk about a Perfect Drug which would only do what you want, when you want it, and without any side effects. Perfect drugs pretty much don't exist...hence side effects. That doesn't mean they don't do the thing they're meant to do (e.g. Save Life) but it means they also do other things (e.g. Cause your eyes to change color)

      • Undo bad moderation

    • Re:It's totally life saving! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @04:01PM (#53545325) Homepage

      As I understand TFS, there's a lot of doses available now that could be used to cover an outbreak, but those are not covered by full regulatory approval, and manufacturing capability is also probably rather low right now.

      Once full approval comes through, in about a year, the vaccine would be generally available, and I would expect it to become part of the recommended treatment for anyone going to a risky area, as is currently the case with the yellow fever vaccine.

    • So we had best wait a year before doing anything with it. Until it's ready for human use you don't have a vaccine, you have a hype train.

      Relax. This disease is not hitting the US, so Ebola-ravaged countries won't have to wait years for the vaccine or need to have half their Ebola at-risks given a placebo. The final testing is in progress now in the field.

  • How long until someone suggests that this is a scheme by Merck to profit or do "some horrible thing" to poor African villagers who would surely prefer to die of disease or malnutrition. "I can't believe they're selling this instead of giving it away for free!" "How do they know those villagers wouldn't have gotten better on their own!?"

  • PLEASE NOTE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @03:45PM (#53545269)

    I posted this story, not msmash.

    Is this happening to other people too? For example, might there be someone other than BeauHD who posted a renewable energy story?

  • Vaccine is Canadian! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This vaccine was developed in Canada. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/canadian-vaccine-for-ebola-virus-proves-extremely-effective-in-clinical-trial/article33416753/

  • What is more telling is that it took for some white people to be infected to start research into making a vaccine

    • Wrong, research on Ebola vaccine started over a decade ago after outbreak in the Congo.

      Making up nonsense to justify an imagined chip on your shoulder is pathetic

  • Take this with a great big block of salt, as this comes from the Great Vaccine Liar, Merck, which was caught red handed lying about the effectiveness and deadly side effects of its MMR vaccine.

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