Breakthrough in the battle against Ebola
Ebola could soon be classified as a curable disease, now that two experimental treatments have been shown to massively cut the death rate for patients with the hemorrhagic virus. Scientists have been testing four different drugs in Congo, where a yearlong Ebola epidemic has killed at least 1,800 people. The death rate for Ebola, which causes catastrophic internal bleeding, has been about 70 percent in the current outbreak. But the mortality rate went down to 29 percent for patients who received a drug from U.S. firm Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and to 34 percent for those who took a drug from Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, which is also American. Among patients who began treatment soon after developing symptoms, when the disease is easier to treat, rates fell to 6 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
The drugs use monoclonal antibodies: Y-shaped proteins that recognize the shape of the Ebola virus and call on immune cells to attack it. This breakthrough could transform the fight against Ebola. Many infected people in Congo have been reluctant to seek medical care, because they have seen family members go into treatment centers and come out dead. “Now that 90 percent of patients can go into the treatment center and come out completely cured, they will start developing trust,” Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, from Congo’s federal medical research institute, tells CNN.com. “These advances will help save thousands of lives.”