Trials to speed treatment for Ebola
Print Edition
GLOBAL aid agency Doctors Without Borders said yesterday it would begin unprecedented trials within a month on Ebola drugs and blood from survivors using patients in west Africa.
The trials in Guinea are aimed at rushing out an emergency therapy to battle an epidemic which has taken more than 5,000 lives since December.
“This is an unprecedented international partnership which represents hope for patients to finally get real treatment against a disease that today kills between 50 and 80 percent of those infected,” said Annick Antierens, who is coordinating the trials for the medical charity, known by its French initials MSF.
The first trials are due to start in December and results could be available by February next year, MSF said.
Ebola, transmitted through body fluids, leads to hemorrhagic fever and — in an estimated 70 percent of cases in the current outbreak — death.
There is no specific treatment regime and, as yet, no licensed vaccine, although one of the leading candidates, known as ChAd3 and made by Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline, is under test.
Patients’ best chance of survival, if their condition is caught early enough, is taking paracetamol for their fever, rehydrating and being kept well nourished.
The French National Institute of Health and Medical Research will trial antiviral drug favipiravir in southern Guinea.
Meanwhile, the Antwerp-based Institute of Tropical Medicine will lead trials of “convalescent whole blood and plasma therapy” at MSF’s Donka Ebola center in Conakry, Guinea’s capital.
MSF had announced a third trial on antiviral brincidofovir at its treatment unit in Liberian capital Monrovia, but later revealed it had not yet been given the green light by local authorities.
Ebola, which emerged in Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976, is one of the most aggressive pathogens known, and victims tend to die a few days after showing symptoms.
The target for a successful trial in each of the treatments under consideration will be the patient surviving for two weeks, said MSF. The charity said there would be little disruption to the patients’ normal care.
Patients in the Conakry trial will be administered with blood or plasma containing antibodies from survivors.
“Convalescent plasma from recovered patients, containing antibodies against pathogens, has been safely used for other infectious diseases,” said lead coordinator Johan van Griensven.
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