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Ebola Vaccine Passes Initial Human Tests
An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com has an article about the first successful tests of an Ebola vaccine on human subjects." From the article: "Nabel and colleagues at the NIH's Vaccine Research Center developed a vaccine made of DNA strands that encode three Ebola proteins. They boosted that vaccine with a weakened cold-related virus, and the combination protected monkeys exposed to Ebola. The first human testing looked just at the vaccine's DNA portion; the full combination will be tested later. At a microbiology meeting in Washington on Friday, Nabel and colleagues reported seeing no worrisome side effects when comparing six people given dummy shots with 21 volunteers given increasing doses of the DNA vaccine."
that ruins the entire book. reading about someone crashing and bleeding out just isn't the same when you know there's a vaccine. wonder if it would work on the Shiva virus.
TFA says "volunteers" but I'll bet they're paid volunteers. I wonder if they're told that they're being injected with ebola?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
but being the second post has got to make you feel FAMOUS.
LOL -Neil bauman
If I remember correctly, Ebola was this virus a few years ago that "spread from apes to humans" and thus would spread and kill us all. Wait, isn't that what Avian Flu is going to do to us? It's all a lot of hype.
Quoting from the article, "...the vaccine recipients produced Ebola-specific antibodies, giving 'us some confidence that the vaccine is having an effect on the immune system'..." If this is the case, it will most likely be added among the shots we receive when we are born. Possibly, if all goes well, we could at it to Malaria as a thing of the past. You just have to wonder though, does it have the potential to mutate and develope new/different strands?
Stoned4Life
gen = new Random
I have to say, the and the closely related hemorragic fever are very deadly. I am glad to see that there are signs to a potential working vaccine for it
considering the rarity of ebola, what's the point of a vaccine? Who do you even give it to? From wikipedia: "Of the approximate 1,500 identified Ebola cases worldwide, over 80% of the patients have died." Maybe we should be working on a cure for fan death instead.
It happened with AIDS drugs, it may very well happen with EBOLA drugs
We used to puke blood and have gaping sores appear and gosh darn it that's how we LIKED it!
So....
Who first?
hah! take that!
not so important now, mouse/rats ?
So theres a study that says that one component of the vaccine has no harmful side effects on humans. But does it work? And more importantly, how much can I make by buying up some pharmco stock now?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Since the primary victims of this disease are impoverished, will this be given at no cost to them?
If not, then the research was moot.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
... my brain went, "WTF is an electronic bola?"
I thought my job interview with Frito Lay was tough!
Let me guess the group bleeding out of their eyes got the placebo?
Without discounting their achievement, I would like to say that 21 people is very less a number to be satisfied about the safety of a drug. Lethal idiosyncratic aplastic anemia in chloramphenicol occurs in 1 in 25000 people, which was sufficient for this drug to be almost kicked out of the market (it is only used where all other drugs have failed).
Also, it is yet to be seen if side effects appear in the patients in the presence of Ebola virus, since all these subjects were not exposed to Ebola virus (ofcourse it is not ethical to do such an experiment, but we will come to know of that only after the vaccine comes out in the market - via Phase IV trials).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meningococcus
...
Yes, antibiotics are reserved to fight bacterial infections, but it's stupid to say you can not vaccinate against bacterial infections and only virii. Why do we take pre-emptive measures to fight bacterial meningitis by way of vaccination?
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it is my believe a vaccination is merely a precautionary cure regardless of the type of ilness (bacteria / virus)
Vaccines are for viruses, antibiotics are for bacteria, but Ebola IS a virus. Maybe you should do some MORE checking before you post, eh?
Um, Ebola is a virus. Check the article. Or check google; you can even buy it on eBay...
This is true... so i suppose my mild argument was moot. Key word in "Ebola Virus" is VIRUS. :)
How can you not know what ebola is? IF you aren't a troll, you're stupid beyond comprehension.
Until I read the whole blurb, I was sure that Ebola was aceing final exams in sociology and psychology, now that they play the role that the old driver's test used to play in becoming a "real person" in America.
--
make install -not war
Yes, we should get terminology correct. I will not point out why the "ebola virus" would not be affected by antibiotics.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Khyber, Ebola is a virus, not a bacteria.
Ebola is a filovirus, one of the simplest and deadliest that we know of on earth.
If I remember correctly, it is a string of biological matter that consists of six proteins and looks under a microscope like a shepherd's crook.
It infects cells in the human body - both blood and tissue - and replicates quite rapidly utilizing the body's own RNA strands until the cell literally bursts and releases quite a large quantity of the newly formed virus, which then infects more cells and repeats the process.
Ebola's only purpose is to replicate inside the warm biological matter of humans and monkeys, destroying cellular tissue as it goes about its "life cycle".
Ebola Zaire kills about 9 out of 10 people it comes into direct contact with, and Marburg - another filovirus - kills about 8 out of 10.
Ebola Reston was first found in Washington state in a storage facility built to house monkeys. It infected two workers who came into contact with dead or infected monkeys, but it didn't kill them.
Ebola Reston and Ebola Zaire are 1 marker apart in their protein make-up, but Zaire kills humans while Reston doesn't seem to, yet.
However, Ebola Reston seems capable of moving through the air, hence monkeys in the storage warehouse getting sick without contact with each other but all breathing the same re-circulated air conditioned air inside.
Ebola Zaire, deadly, only contractable through contact with infected bodily fluids. Ebola Reston, one protein different and apparently able to be breathed out by an infected person and infect someone else, like a cold.
Think about that.
I hope that this anti-viral vaccine is able to be produced quickly and cheaply because we don't want an outbreak of mutated Reston.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
eom
Yeah, that's a weird subject for an ebola thread.
I once dated a girl who worked in a pathology lab identifying contagious disease samples. When she'd talk about it, she made it sound like she dealt with some pretty serious stuff, so I asked her what she had worked with that day. I don't recall all of the different things, but among them were two different types of ebola. That kind of surprised me. I mean, the 3 or 4 different types of HIV you can expect - with hundreds of millions of people infected all over the world, that's a given, but ebola is vastly less common, and I didn't expect to hear of her dealing with two different types in a single day.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Actually, I was thinking of something else - because Ebola is going to be injected into people(although most of the time dead, sometimes it is still alive -just look at all the flu vaccines.) it might be given a rather large chance to mutate THAT way.
Didn't Dustan Hoffman already find a cure for Ebola?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
I'm not saying you are wrong about the 2-21 days, merely that you use a bad argument to support your case. Instead, you could have used Questions and Answers about Ebola. Don't worry, I already added that as a source in Wikipedia.
wasnt their always a cure for ebola? or was that just a movie thing?
portfolio
Does this mean it will be safe to try the raw monkey brains the next time I'm in Africa?
"We're going to test this vaccine on you, now there may be a few side effects."
"What sort of thing, doc?"
"Well, nausea, itching, your entire body melting, and there's a chance of drowsiness. So avoid using heavy machinery."
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
One correction:
Ebola Reston was first found in Washington D.C. (specifically, a storage facility in Reston, Virginia).
Dept. of Energy Human Radiation Experiments
Tuskekee Syphilis Experimentation
Essay on Human Experimentation ...
...
Though I just yanked the top most of my mind and located that on Google for you, this should get you started.
The incidents you listed are all more than 50 years old
maybe "was a fact" may have been more appropriate
Aren't you glad you were not in an "unsuccessful" test!
It needs to go to an 'everyone can moderate everything' system like kuro5hin or digg. Most people would knock the above butt-extruded joke down but, because there are 4 retards who found it funny it gets rated high and stays that way because no-one wants to waste their points.
Someday we'll all be negroes
How come I am under the impression that I'm just talking to one person who is upset about this? Talk to me fifty years from now and I will tell you about the experimentation that went on in 2006. Humanity may have made a couple of leaps forwards in technology hence, but certainly not in ethics so what makes you think a third world life is worth more than four figure value a piece?
So. They got a vaccine for Ebola. What's preventing them from getting something similar for AIDS? Do medical companies do not feel the urge to cure AIDS because that would dry up their revenue stream? You know, Ebola patients die much, much faster than AIDS ones, giving companies very little time to milk their prospective customers.... What's the catch besides the old "a solution for HIV is hard because the virus mutates" blurb?
you may need to check your facts. The term vaccine comes from vaca which is the latin root for cow. This is because the first vaccine came from using the COWPOX scabs to provide immunity against SMALLPOX (yes that is a virus). BUT Vaccines are anything that boosts the immune system to respond to an agent that was previously unnoticed (or sometimes under-noticed) There is for instance a vaccine for nicotine (an organic molecule) there are vaccines for shigella, campylobacte j. and ETEC (THESE ARE BACERIA) which are common causes of gastroenteritis in general and travelers diarrhea in particular.
"-1, Idiot".
Come on Slashdot, I know it's possible. Gimme more choices for moderating!!
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Ebola is a bioterrorism agent. It is one of the few level fours that we have (The top). It would be a difficult weapon as, at the moment 1) its not airborne (though ebola reston was) 2) it has a low attack rate (meaning you arent as likely to get it if someone coughs blood in your eyes) 3) its not very tough (dies quickly on countertops) 4) burns itself out quickly (anything that kills it host quickly doesnt allow you to spread it very far. on average a person with ebola infects 5-8 whereas smallpox would get 10-15 at least)
BUT its a great bioterrorism agent because 1) the deaths are spectacular and 2) people are scared of it. 3) its out there not locked up in labs (like smallpox) 4) we have zero treatments (RTIs, etc dont help much)
1)A vaccine is an awesome thing to have b/c some day we may need it here. 2) there are healthcare workers in africa who could use it now. 3) every vaccine that works gives us an idea on how to fight other similar viri.
Every baby today gets the hib vaccine to protect against haemophilus influenza type b, a bacteria that was once a major cause of meningitis in infants. Now it's rarely seen. Ever hear of the DPT vaccine that most people on this forum have received? It protects against diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus. Guess what? They're all caused by bacteria. Moral of the story. Of course vaccines can protect against bacteria.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
No, it would have been the other way around. This was simply a test to see if the vaccine does NOT evoke the thing it is trying to prevent (Ebola) or cause any other outright acute adverse events. Eventually there will be inocculation with the vaccine followed by exposure to Ebola virus (or enough of the virus to see if an immunologic response is evoked while minimizing the risk of actually getting Ebola).
The group bleeding from their ass was considered more important.
IIRC from The Hot Zone, you only need about five virii fragments in order to get the infection.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
Reminds of the book "The Hot Zone." They describe all the different Ebola incarnations and the original peopls infected by it. One person got it from bat guano while spelunking. Pretty tough shit to go through. You think you have a bad flu, until you start coughing up parts of yourself and your epi/dermis seperates to form a 3rd layer made purely of blood. The bodies literally look like they got slow cooked because the virus just overtakes their flesh.
And probably the main bacterial vaccine that everyone should be familiar with on Slashdot, tetanus toxoid vaccine. There are quite a few more antibacterial vaccines for animals (campyolobacteria, chlamydia, etc.).
Monkeys were being stored in a business park in Reston, Virginia, prior to going to their final destinations. Reston is a suburb of Washington, D.C....
That reads like the flyleaf of a thriller.
I'm still a lot more scared of getting hit by a car.
And, frankly, I'd say that Africa should worry a lot more about AIDS than about Ebola.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Calm down. You'll get your turn to moderate, and then you can do your part to rid the world of jokes that don't make you laugh.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
"Reducing the number of cases of Avian Flu in humans by culling birds and inducing fear in the populations where it occurs all helps by reducing the chances the virus has to mutate."
Inducing fear in populations leads to a distribution nightmare for treatments.
Due to all the scare and paranoia, there is a worldwide shortage of Tamiflu despite the fact that the actual need for the drug is far lower than the production capability. The problem is that tons of people who have no actual need for it are hoarding it in advance, resulting in the few people who actually need it not getting it.
A few months ago I was at a pharmacy getting a prescription filled, and the Asian lady in front of me somehow convinced a doctor to give her three "blank check" prescriptions for Tamiflu without any patient names on them. It was pretty clear the lady didn't need it, and I'm pretty sure given the hinky nature of the prescription(s) that no one in her family actually needed it too. If they had, their doctor would have actually written the required patient names on the prescriptions. (Thankfully, the pharmacy wouldn't fill the prescriptions because they weren't legitimate without a patient name. Of course I had to wait ten minutes while the lady argued with the pharmacist...)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Ebola Reston is named after Restion, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Not the state of Washington.
Also I believe there is a second African strain of Ebola that is less lethal than Zaire but still lethal to humans.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Those were all just isolated incidents and you are making it sound like some conspiracy. People like you should have their heads examined.
You're probably more in the minority instead of the majority if you would have moderated that down.
As for 'wasting' mod points, I look at each comment and if I really think it deserves to be modded up or down, I'll spend the point. Most of the time I have mod points that expire unallocated.
Well, I find that hard to believe, but thanks for responding.
I guess I'm used to that level of humor getting filtered out at other sites (kuro5hin.org).
Someday we'll all be negroes