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Medicine

Ebola Is Now Curable (wired.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the medical-advances dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: 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. 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.

Patients receiving Zmapp in the four trial centers experienced an overall mortality rate of 49 percent, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (Mortality rates are in excess of 75 percent for infected individuals who don't seek any form of treatment.) The monoclonal antibody cocktail produced by a company called Regeneron Pharmaceuticals had the biggest impact on lowering death rates, down to 29 percent, while NIAID's monoclonal antibody, called mAb114, had a mortality rate of 34 percent. The results were most striking for patients who received treatments soon after becoming sick, when their viral loads were still low -- death rates dropped to 11 percent with mAb114 and just 6 percent with Regeneron's drug, compared with 24 percent with ZMapp and 33 percent with Remdesivir.
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Ebola Is Now Curable More

Ebola Is Now Curable

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  • Epidemics needed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Monday August 12, 2019 @10:39PM (#59081438)

    ... to drive research into finding a cure for a disease which was known about and feared for over 50 years.

    it seems management through crisis is not just limited to the software Industry.

    This was a CRUNCH.

    • Re:Epidemics needed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by taiwanjohn ( 103839 ) on Monday August 12, 2019 @10:57PM (#59081472)

      Sadly true. But it's still nice to see a bit of good news now and then, especially these days, and especially in a region where there always seems to be a surplus of bad news.

    • This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
      Medicinal science: We do what we must, because we can... For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Smells to me more like allowing them to live longer to spread the disease further rather than a majority of the time eliminates the infection. Oddly this cure seems to spread the infection further and allow the little bit of hope to ease the spread, just saying. Cure means more like at least 80% or more and more like high nineties.

      • Re: Epidemics needed (Score:5, Informative)

        by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @01:46AM (#59081656) Journal
        No. Ebola is transmissible before symptoms appear, so the infection is already spreading before treatment begins. Once treatment does begin, you are quarantined until either you or the Ebola dies.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

          No. Ebola is transmissible before symptoms appear, so the infection is already spreading before treatment begins. Once treatment does begin, you are quarantined until either you or the Ebola dies.

          And that's what has made fighting ebola in central Africa so difficult. Because symptoms onset so late in the infection process and the disease progresses so rapidly, families would see (apparently) healthy people walk into WHO/MSF facilities and come out in body bags, and assume they were being killed there. So they would either go after the facilities to "rescue" their family members or hide them and treat them themselves, spreading the infection. Proper disposal and burial of infected remains also con

          • They also have to fight their own bone-headedness, like the nurse who figured she was ok (only had a bit of a sniffle) so got on a flight back to Scotland. Nothing could go wrong, she was a professional after all and Ebola doesn't apply to people like her.

            I think a fair bit of the funding for these drugs started when it was clear the disease could have spread like that. Suddenly, after decades of "so what" things changed to "oh, better find a cure in case I need it"

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

              They also have to fight their own bone-headedness, like the nurse who figured she was ok (only had a bit of a sniffle) so got on a flight back to Scotland. Nothing could go wrong, she was a professional after all and Ebola doesn't apply to people like her.

              I think a fair bit of the funding for these drugs started when it was clear the disease could have spread like that. Suddenly, after decades of "so what" things changed to "oh, better find a cure in case I need it"

              It is a fair argument to say that concern about ebola only really grew with the advent of modern travel, but that has more to do with the virus itself more than anything else. Because it's contagious while people are asymptomatic, it's easy for people to travel around the world before they show symptoms, whereas in the past the disease might wipe out a whole village or 2 then peter out because it killed too quickly and travel was much slower. It's more a case of cost/benefit analysis- as it became a much

            • Just have lots and lots of babies. So that when a few die from Ebola, or, far more likely, one of a dozen other diseases, or violence, it will not make much difference.

              Ebola is not a problem for Africa. At least not a problem we care about. But the idea of that nurse coming back and infecting US with an incurable disease. That is important.

        • No. Ebola is transmissible before symptoms appear, so the infection is already spreading before treatment begins. Once treatment does begin, you are quarantined until either you or the Ebola dies.

          https://acaforko.com/ebola [acaforko.com]

    • Re:Epidemics needed (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @01:27AM (#59081628) Journal

      That's observational bias on your part I would say.

      This was the last clinical trial that was done in an epidemic situation. This makes sense, because you don't go infecting a few hundred people with a disease you can't, at that point, reliably cure so where else would you test the substances?

      But the development was done over many years prior. As was said, the disease is decades old. This wasn't a crunch per se... This was just the opportunity to test what you came up with over all those years.

    • You can't actually make vaccines very well that way... scary epidemics do make funding easier to come by when it comes time for expensive clinical trials, but the basic research plods along either way via normal grant means.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      ... to drive research into finding a cure for a disease which was known about and feared for over 50 years.

      it seems management through crisis is not just limited to the software Industry.

      This was a CRUNCH.

      To be blunt, Ebola hasn't really threatened the world until relatively recently, and even then, that threat has come mostly as non-local people contract it in central Africa and subsequently return to their original countries. It's difficult for researchers to convince people unaffected by something to fund it even before considering things like bigotry.

      Considering the nature of what Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo export, it would be entirely possible for the rest of the world to effect

  • And who, in the Congo can afford to pay for them?

    No point developing stuff you cannot sell.

    • Or the 20% of South Africa that is HIV positive, which is far more difficult to spread but somehow has condemned millions.

    • Re:How much do the drugs cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gravewax ( 4772409 ) on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @02:37AM (#59081724)
      The Congo, neighbouring governments and western governments are ALL footing the bill for these outbreaks as if they aren't contained eventually they will spread. I imagine the cost of this cure is probably nothing compared to the ongoing costs of containing these outbreaks.

      • Re:How much do the drugs cost? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Kiuas ( 1084567 ) on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @06:16AM (#59082016)

        I imagine the cost of this cure is probably nothing compared to the ongoing costs of containing these outbreaks.

        Exactly. This is the thing the global community needs to realize. I work in health care on the logistical side in Finland, software related but I'm high enough in the command-chain that I've been in a few meetings with epidemiologists where we go through and plan pandemic readiness and procedures.

        When the current ebola outbreak started a few years back, we got a single suspected case of a Finnish backpacker tourist coming in from africa from one of the neighboring countries to the outbreak, with symptoms that might be early signs of ebola. We sent out a team to meet the guy at the airport and take him into quarantine. The docs in charge had to make a decision as to whether or not all the other people in the flight need to be quarantined as well while the bloodwork is done. The dude was interviewed as soon as he landed before the rest of the plane was let go, and he had not been in the infected areas nor involved with any persons that had the infection, and it's not transmitted via air, so they decided against it. Turns out they were right, it came back as some sort of other viral infection and not ebola, and he was released from care next week.

        With flights to and from the third world being so numerous, all it takes is one dude boarding a plane somewhere prior to developing symptoms and landing in a major city to create a massive emergency. Ebola is actually not even the worst kind, because untreated it tends to incapacitate/kill people so fast that it doesn't spread very rapidly, thanks to a large part for it not being airborne. Most infections in Africa occur when relatives and family members touch the infected sick person or handle their corpse after death. With airborne pathogens, the spread can happen very rapidly, and containment of all exposed individuals can be near impossible unless the entire plane is quarantined upon landing.

        The epidemiologists are by their nature paranoid about this stuff, which is fine, it's their job to be so. And they keep reminding us that we're in fact statistically overdue for a global pandemic, the last major one really being the Spanish flu in 1918 which killed an estimated 75 million people globally. The global medical/scientific community coming together and working overtime to fast-track vaccines and other treatments for new emerging outbreaks is absolutely critical, and should be participated in by all developing countries, because it's the most effective (both in terms of monetary cost and lives lost) way to destroy these outbreaks before they spread all over the globe.

        The faster the top-level authorities of all continents communicate, co-ordinate and converge on new outbreaks, the safer we all are. That's why the work the WHO is doing is so extremely valuable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sad_ ( 7868 )

      no point, except saving human lives.
      but i get your point, profit comes first.

    • With Forgiveness Based Fundraising, by donating to a cause the market deems worthy, you can sell tokens representing your good deed. Thus funding for Ebola treatment even in the most desolate areas may be possible with this new funding approach.
      https://acaforko.com/ebola [acaforko.com]
      https://remedycoin.com/ [remedycoin.com]

  • Excellent! Now, let's get the medic in with a direct flight to mop up!

    Everybody start burning those yellow cards to keep outbreaks under control... Whatever we have the most cards for is what we'll try to cure next.

    • I think it's disgusting that you talk about this like it's a game. We've had six outbreaks so far. One more and it's pretty much game over. I don't think you'd be so glib if you weren't hiding out in Atlanta.

  • Because profits (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Monday August 12, 2019 @11:21PM (#59081502)

    Companies like Regeneron have the money to do Ebola research because they make huge profits on their other treatments. Regeneron [wikipedia.org] specifically has a number of expensive treatments, including injections that keep elderly patients from going blind.

    Without profits, their work would not be done.

    • Without profits, their work would not be done.

      On the contrary. There are a lot of ideological research organizations in the medical field. The problem is that a lot of medicines are developed for lifestyle diseases by the drug manufacturers, because they have a higher financial return, while necessary medicines are not developed by them because profit is more important to them than producing actual medicines. Also, developing a cure is quite stupid in a business perspective, but a excellent for society. Drugs that suppress a disease will have yield fin

    • Re:Because profits (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @04:07AM (#59081824) Homepage Journal

      Unless it was government funded. There is a decent case to be made for governments funding this kind of R&D and then making the resulting treatments available cheaply. For unions like the EU and the US it wouldn't even be a particularly massive financial burden, and for the EU would probably save money in the long run because healthcare is socialised.

      • It was government funded, by BARDA. They contributed a total of ~$70M to Regeneron, and another ~$150M to three other companies with competing antibody treatments. It's important to keep in mind, though, that there is a cost-share involved in all of these cases. We don't know how much the total development cost was, yet. Another thing to keep in mind is that Regeneron was successful because they had an R&D platform and manufacturing facilities in place to develop antibody treatments. These are very expe

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kohath ( 38547 )

        Ebola sufferers want a real treatment that really exists because of profitable drug research. They don't have time to wait for a theoretical treatment that might somehow exist based on some concept pushed by ideologues.

        It's not ok to ask disease sufferers to sacrifice their lives to prevent scientists and businessmen from making a return on their investment.

    • You can't make drugs like this without government money.

  • Curable? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Monday August 12, 2019 @11:29PM (#59081512)

    Much more like treatable.

    11% fatalities is still pretty high.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      I agree. This is really, really important but best case scenario Ebola is still a nasty, dangerous disease and I hope there's no reduction in research for an actual cure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      It always was treatable, it was never a 100% death rate. All that has changed is that the cure rate has gone up with a new treatment.

      • It always was treatable, it was never a 100% death rate. All that has changed is that the cure rate has gone up with a new treatment.

        IV fluids have a huge impact on cure rate. Unfortunately, they are difficult to administer in portions of Africa.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hipp5 ( 1635263 )

      Much more like treatable.

      11% fatalities is still pretty high.

      I wonder how it affects transmission rates, because if it affects that measurably then it could result in "cure" in the sense that the disease is dying out faster than it can be transmitted (i.e. the end of outbreaks).

    • The more effective drug was 6%, not 11%. And I was gonna say the same thing, but I did some checking and that's not too far from the realm of many other things considered a cure. Harvoni is considered a cure for Hepatitis C, and it's effectiveness varies between 94-99% depending on the study. No cure is 100% effective***.

      ***The cure for the common cold, chicken noodle soup, is close. Nearly 100% of those who take it survive their cold, with a tiny fraction dying from allergic reaction. Though admittedly i
    • Cured is the right word, treatable would be more like HIV where you never clear the virus entirely.

    • Treatment means the virus is never eliminated from your body completely. HIV medications are "treatments" for this reason. You must stay on them forever to keep the viral titres low and prevent transmission. Cures remove the virus completely. If you survive the infection, you are "cured" because you don't have to stay on medication to prevent relapse.

      I get your point, though. Overall mortality rate is still shockingly high, but there are multiple factors to consider. 11% is for one treatment. There are four

  • But... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jargonburn ( 1950578 ) on Tuesday August 13, 2019 @01:57AM (#59081664)
    But are any studies tracking the incidence of autism in the affected population?
    Asking on behalf of the willfully ignorant.
  • This is absolutely good [medium.com].
  • It seems like Ebola keeps flaring up in Africa every couple of years. Then it gets "eradicated", only to come back again.

    With all the flare-ups, I hope detection and treatment methods become better and more widely available.

    But if there really is a cure for it (I sincerely hope there is a cure for it), something tells me that an organism that can live dormant in your eyeballs, salivary glands, testicles, and other parts of the body, isn't going to be something that just goes away.
    • Eh? It's never been eradicated, only outbreaks contained. In North America we normally get a flu outbreak once a year, but in between we don't say it has been eradicated, because we're just waiting for the waterfowl to bring a new strain back over again. In places with fruit bats, you get an ebola outbreak a little more randomly, but you can't eradicate it without vaccinating all the bats, and since they like to fly all over, you'd have to vaccinate all the bats in the continent.
    • It gets contained, but you can’t really eradicate it. There are too many potential non-human hosts, and the humans have a penchant for eating any meat they can get their hands on. Maybe if you went and slaughtered all the primates in the area, you could make a dent.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      But if there really is a cure for it (I sincerely hope there is a cure for it), something tells me that an organism that can live dormant in your eyeballs, salivary glands, testicles, and other parts of the body, isn't going to be something that just goes away.

      It actually does. One of the American survivors of a recent outbreak was found to still have virus particles in his eyes a year or two later.

      But it also doesn't go away because it is carried by certain wild animals and due to food scarcity, lack of development, and tradition locals continue to hunt and consume bushmeat which causes new flareups.

  • Ebola has been documented to have been cured at least 4 times. https://acaforko.com/ebola [acaforko.com] .

    Check out the African Journal of Infectious Diseases articles linked from my web site.
    Ozone Therapy and colloidal silver and their artful application by doctors taught by Dr. Robert Rowen were the key.

    No drugs are necessary.

    The World Health Organization was made aware of this from my Twitter feed as you can see.

    • Ozone therapy is a age old con that has been around since the 80's and 90's where con artists like you pushed it as a cure from everything to cancer to ebola, sadly the only cure it offers is death while enriching the con artists like yourself.

  • What will we do now, Ebola-chan?

  • DR.: You have Ebola, HANTA Virus and AIDS.
    Patient: What can you do?
    DR.: We will start you on a diet of flounder and pancakes.
    Patient: Will that cure me?
    DR.: No, but it's all we can slip under the door.

  • They've lost the Shield of Faith known as /ebola/ and just look what happens.

    Cowtits.

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