New study raises hopes of drug treatment for Ebola

A new study provides strong evidence that the experimental drug given to two US aid workers who contracted Ebola in Africa really worked and could make a difference in the current outbreak, if it could be produced in larger quantities, The New York Times reported.

The study found that all 18 monkeys exposed to a lethal dose of Ebola virus survived following treatment with the drug even when it was started five days after infection, when the animals were already sick.

Further, the monkeys' symptoms, such as excessive bleeding, rashes and signs of liver toxicity, finally disappeared while the three monkeys in the control group died.

According to experts, these were the best monkey results reported to date for any Ebola drug, raising hopes that the drug would work in people.

According to Kartik Chandran, an expert on Ebola who was not involved in the study, the results were impressive.

He said to be actually able to reverse all those symptoms and and bring them back to baseline, he thought, was astounding. Dr Chandran, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine added, if patients had be administered this outbreak, this would be the drug.

Gary Kobinger, one of the researchers in the study and a professor at the University of Manitoba said the drug "worked fantastically well", The Globe and Mail reported. He added, he researchers expected an improvement and were hoping for it, but the level of improvement was actually beyond his own expectations and he was quite surprised.

The development of the drug came after earlier trials, the results of which were used to select the most effective combination of antibodies to fight the virus following infection.

According to Dr Kobinger, the incubation period for Ebola was different in humans than in other primates. He said while humans might not show any symptoms until as late as 21 days, all of the monkeys in the trial had a fever and other clinical symptoms within five days of getting infected. He added, humans would probably have the same amount of the virus in their system roughly nine to 11 days after becoming infected, though it was difficult to translate between species.

Six individuals who came down with the disease received ZMapp as a last-ditch effort to save them earlier this summer. Two survived, two died but there had been no update on the other two.

According to Kobinger while there was not enough information on these cases to draw a conclusion, there were several possibilities for why the drug succeeded in some cases and failed in others.

He said while it was known at one point there was a point of no return where there was too much damage in the major organs (for the drug to be effective). He added, there were other factors like the age, the timing and the general health of the person that came into play.