Skip to main content

Scientists And Doctors Have Discovered CURE For Ebola.Health And Study.WhatsApp Number +243810842056 For More News Feed And To Give us News.#THANKS.


Ebola is Now Curable. Here is  How The New Treatments Work.


A clinical trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been testing new Ebola drugs with dramatic results. For newly infected patients on one of the drugs, the mortality rate dropped to 6 percent.


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.


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.


Drugs based on monoclonal antibodies have become a mainstay of modern medicine—fending off diseases as disparate as cancer, arthritis, and lupus. But it takes many years of painstaking reverse-engineering to make them. Zmapp, for instance, was developed by infecting mice with Ebola and then collecting the antibodies the mice produced against the virus. Those antibodies then had to be further engineered to look more like a human antibody, so as not to provoke an immune reaction. Ebola infiltrates its victims’ cells using spiky proteins on the virus’s outer shell, so researchers screened the antibodies for the ones that did the best job of binding to those proteins. Block access, and the virus can’t replicate and spread. But compared with other viruses, Ebola is large and has the ability to change shape, making it difficult for any one antibody to block its infection. That’s why a cocktail approach has become favored, like the Regeneron product—a combination of three monoclonal antibodies generated first in mice.


An even better solution, some have posited, would be to mine the serum of Ebola survivors and harvest the DNA from the white blood cells that make antibodies. That would yield a set of genetic instructions for making antibodies with a proven track record against the Ebola virus. That’s what the NIH’s mAb114 is—an antibody isolated from the blood of a survivor of a 1995 outbreak in Kikwit, DRC. Scientists discovered it a few years ago—they had been circulating in his body for more than a decade.


With the WHO’s announcement a new trial will now kick off, directly comparing Regeneron to mAb114, which is being produced by a Florida-based company called Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. And all Ebola treatment units in the outbreak zone will now only administer the two most effective monoclonal antibody drugs, according to the WHO’s director of health emergencies, Mike Ryan.


“Today’s news puts us one more step to saving more lives,” said Ryan. “The success is clear. But there’s also a tragedy linked to the success. The tragedy is that not enough people are being treated. We are still seeing too many people staying away from treatment centers, people not being found in time to benefit from these therapies.”


Since the ongoing outbreak began last August in DRC’s North Kivu province, more than 2,800 people have become infected, with 1,794 confirmed deaths. It is the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded. On July 17, the WHO declared it a “public health emergency of international concern,” after a case showed up in Goma, a large city bordering Rwanda. The risk of transmission across international borders remains high.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Escaped Murder Suspect Finally Arrested in Yumbe Regional Referral Hospital, Yumbe District.

Story by Osuta Yusuf. 19-November-2024. 📸: Eyotre Kennedy handcuffed on bed while receiving medication this morning at Yumbe Regional Referral Hospital in Yumbe District. Eyotre Kennedy originating from Etoko village, Nyoroo Parish, Nyadri Sub-county in Maracha District who has for many years been terrorizing residents in his village, has finally been arrested this Monday morning 19-November-2024 while receiving treatment at Yumbe Regional Referral Hospital in Yumbe District following injuries he sustained from Theft mission on Saturday night 16-November-2024 in Owapi village, Azapi parish in Odupi Sub-county, Terego East Constituency in Terego District. Click here on the link  https://informationispowah.blogspot.com/2024/11/fugitive-who-chopped-3-people-killed.html   to read the story on his Theft of Goats in Terego. Upon getting cut on the finger and leg by the Mob as he attempted to fight and overpower owner of the goats he attempted to steal on Saturday night ...

41-Years-Old Man Digs His Own Grave in Maracha District.

Story by Osuta Yusuf.  Maracha District.  📸: The grave been dug by Mr Opiga Michael, a victim of frustration. Photo taken by Osuta Yusuf , on Wednesday 11-September-2024. The residents of Ebapi village, Baria Parish in Nyadri Sub-county, Maracha east constituency, Maracha District are in shock after a 41 year old man started digging his own grave. The man, identified as Mr Opiga Michael, who seems to be frustrated over some challenges in life, started digging his own grave on Tuesday 10-September-2024 until he was stopped by the elders in Nyaria clan. 📸: Opiga Michael, the Victim of Frustration. Photo by Osuta Yusuf , Information is Power. While speaking to our reporter on Wednesday evening 11-September-2024, Mr Opiga Michael, said, his main plan  was to commit suicide after finishing digging the grave for burying himself, explained that, he feels frustrated, abandoned and hated by his own clan people, whom he accused of piling lies against him a...

Wedded Ayivu West MP Lematia John Fights Over Another Woman.

  📸: Hon Lematia John. By URN. Police in Arua district are investigating a case of assault and threatening violence involving the Member of Parliament for Ayivu West Constituency John Lematia and James Ariko, a DSTV technician in Arua city. Drama ensued on Easter Sunday 31-3-2024 at Dream Land Hotel located at Kuluva trading center along Arua-Nebbi highway in Arua district when the legislator and the technician engaged in a fight reportedly over a woman identified as Faith Eyotaru 25, a relationship officer at Victoria University Kampala. The scuffle started after Ayivu West Mp John Lematia went to swim at Dreamland Hotel with Faith Eyotaru only to find Ariko, who had gone to the same hotel earlier. However, upon seeing the duo coming out of the vehicle, Ariko confronted Lematia with both men claiming to be having a relationship with the lady. It took the intervention of the staff at the hotel who intervened and separated the fight between the men. Josephine Angucia, the West Nil...