Protect against Ebola virus. Slow down and even put a stop to infection in infected individuals. Researchers working on finding an effective treatment for hemorrhagic fever have good reason to believe. One of the drugs studied, Zmapp, has just proven itself on monkeys by saving 18 animals infected with a strain of the Ebola virus. All without exception were successful in this preclinical trial, even at an advanced stage of the disease, five days after infection.
The results of this promising experiment appeared in the scientific journal Nature. Three doses of drugs injected into 18 of the 21 infected monkeys were enough to destroy the virus. Zmapp serum was able to cure serious symptoms of the disease such as bleeding from the mucous membranes, rashes on the skin, as well as increased liver enzymes in the blood. 21 days after infection, the virus had become undetectable in the recovered animals. Only the 3 untreated sick monkeys did not survive.
But prudence remains in order. The virus inoculated in monkeys is not the same as that which plagues Guinea. This is a strain discovered in 1995 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to American and Canadian researchers, ZMapp would nevertheless be able to block the multiplication of the strain responsible for the epidemic in Guinea during laboratory tests.
Upcoming clinical trials
the Zmapp has already been tested previously. He was talked about after he managed to save two American aid workers infected in Liberia. But in total, of the seven people to whom it had been administered urgently, two did not respond to the treatment. It is therefore still too early to judge the real effectiveness of this serum.
Another uncertainty concerns the production of this experimental drug, which is expensive and difficult to produce. At the end of August, stocks were already exhausted.
A phase 1 clinical trial should begin in humans at the beginning of September to possibly obtain a vaccine by 2015. It is therefore a race against time which begins for scientists, knowing that the hecatomb linked to the Ebola virus amounted to more than 1,500 dead (1,552 dead, including 694 in Liberia, 430 in Guinea, 422 in Sierra Leone and 6 in Nigeria, according to the latest WHO report on August 26).
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