Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Anti-Ebola Drug ZMapp Makes Clean Sweep: 18 of 18 Monkeys Survive Infection

Posted by timothy on from the not-that-kind-of-monkey-trial dept.

Scientific American reports, based on a study published today in Nature, that ZMapp, the drug that has been used to treat seven patients during the current Ebola epidemic in West Africa, can completely protect monkeys against the virus, research has found. ... The drug — a cocktail of three purified immune proteins, or monoclonal antibodies, that target the Ebola virus — has been given to seven people: two US and three African health-care workers, a British nurse and a Spanish priest. The priest and a Liberian health-care worker who got the drug have since died. There is no way to tell whether ZMapp has been effective in the patients who survived, because they received the drug at different times during the course of their disease and received various levels of medical care. NPR also has an interview with study lead Gary Kobinger, who says that (very cautious) human trials are in the works, and emphasizes the difficulites of producing the drug in quantity.

27 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Human Subjects by eric31415927 · · Score: 2

    When the human testing starts, should it be old people first? afftected-continent people first? family-receives-high-payment people first?

    I think they should be volunteers at the very least.

    1. Re:Human Subjects by Galactic+Dominator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think it should be infected people.

      --
      brandelf -t FreeBSD /brain
    2. Re:Human Subjects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      By law in the U.S. (and most other countries), as well as health care and research codes of ethics, study participants must voluntarily provide informed consent to receive experimental treatments. It's extremely difficult to prove the voluntary part for at-risk populations including people who are elderly, poor, or undereducated. Studies of these populations require additional oversight and safeguards.

      Source: I'm qualified to perform research with participants who have linguistic or cognitive impairments and did so during my M.S. program and in my first job after graduation.

    3. Re:Human Subjects by ThatAblaze · · Score: 2

      When the human testing starts, should it be old people first? afftected-continent people first? family-receives-high-payment people first?

      I think they should be volunteers at the very least.

      If you RTFA you'll notice that human testing has already started.

    4. Re:Human Subjects by fluffy99 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think they should be volunteers at the very least.

      Given the 90% mortality rate of ebola, I suspect nearly anyone infected will want to volunteer. The problem is that the drug can't be mass produced yet. 10s of doses takes months to produce using the current method, which is genetically modified tobacco plants (bit of irony there). A massive influx of resource is needed to ramp up production.

    5. Re:Human Subjects by Noah+Haders · · Score: 2

      i read the fatality rate in this epidemic has been more around 40%.

    6. Re:Human Subjects by BigDukeSix · · Score: 2

      When the human testing starts, should it be old people first? afftected-continent people first? family-receives-high-payment people first?

      Real clinical trials do not work like this. If you want to do a real trial, you first have to establish a team and treatment center that can administer your therapy and collect the data you need. You then establish EXCLUSION criteria, i.e., people who will not be included in the trial (usually old people, who have an annoying tendency to die, and children, because sick kids scare the shit out of most doctors). *Everybody* else who comes to the center, who has the disease, gets offered enrollment in the trial. It's up to them if they want to participate.

      Anything else will get you laughed at, at the very least.

    7. Re:Human Subjects by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      i read the fatality rate in this epidemic has been more around 40%.

      The lowered lethality is actually a bad thing. It means people aren't getting as sick, are staying ambulatory longer, and are spreading the disease to more additional people. With a lethality rate of 90% a disease will likely burn out fast. At 40%, it has more time to spread, and can kill far more people in total. Despite the lower lethality, this outbreak has killed more than any other. If the virus continues to adapt to human hosts, and the lethality falls to 10 or 20%, we are in big trouble.

    8. Re:Human Subjects by LordLimecat · · Score: 2

      So apparently do the people making the decision, so Im glad that all of the important people here are agreed.

    9. Re:Human Subjects by sexconker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "In reality, the worst case scenario now involves an immune host/carrier. "

      Looks like in reality you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about. Such a person/vector would be a pathologist's fucking wet dream to forming a vaccine against the disease in the first fucking place.

      You watch too much TV.
      You can't just find "patient 0", or "the primordial sample" as TNT's shitty show calls it, and then magically get a cure shat out.
      You can't just find some schlub who's immune and magically figure out why and make a vaccine to immunize other people.

  2. Main Problem by no-body · · Score: 4, Interesting

    with Ebola control is health care infra-structure in affected countries. A far cry from what would be necessary to contain further spread. There was one report on a radio station that there are like 10 doctors in a whole country (Africa, forgot the name).

    Even if you have the best drug available defeating the virus in a day, it won't help at all under those circumstances - spread by body fluids from infected individuals.

    The outcome can only be guessed...

    1. Re:Main Problem by Galactic+Dominator · · Score: 2

      There was one report on a radio station that there are like 10 doctors in a whole country

      That would NPR's report as well which stated 50 doctors total in Liberia after some of left during the beginning of the infection.

      http://wvpe.org/post/who-warns...

      Of course considering the mess Liberia has been in for 20+ years this outbreak is relatively minor and only receiving attention due to sensationalism.

      --
      brandelf -t FreeBSD /brain
    2. Re:Main Problem by fluffy99 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Of course considering the mess Liberia has been in for 20+ years this outbreak is relatively minor and only receiving attention due to sensationalism.

      No, it's receiving a lot of attention because the outbreak is not contained to a small remote village as with previous outbreaks. It's not contained at this point (partly due to the lack of govt in these areas), and there is a significant population in danger. The fairly long incubation period of up to a few weeks means this could easily be carried back to major populated areas and spread like wildfire.

    3. Re:Main Problem by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 5, Informative
      Nigeria has a centralised health care system? SInce when? It did not have one in February 2014 when I was there.

      In any case, so far, the only people infected in Nigeria are the health care professionals that treated a Liberian who arrived infected, and the families of those health care workers.

      Disclaimer: two of the deceased (a doctor and a nurse) were known to a colleague of my partner.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    4. Re:Main Problem by Noah+Haders · · Score: 2

      i don't know what centralized health care really means but i do know that doctors in nigeria have a union and that they are on strike and that there are about a dozen cases in nigeria.

  3. oops redux by Galactic+Dominator · · Score: 2

    you forgot to read the summary or the article

    Anti-Ebola Drug ZMapp Makes Clean Sweep: 18 of 18 Monkeys Survive Infection

    --
    brandelf -t FreeBSD /brain
  4. Good news for the wealthiers by manu0601 · · Score: 2

    Good news for the ones that can afford the treatment, either personally or through their government. Death for the others.

  5. Somewhat Less Than 50 White People... by IonOtter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Looks like The Onion got this one wrong.

    Experts: Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away

    I suppose it's a commentary on the state of the world that The Onion is so often inadvertently right with their headlines.

    --
    [End Of Line]
  6. Re:and is the usa the last resort jail / prison he by manu0601 · · Score: 2

    Considering the growing fraction of US population that live in prisons, that seems fair.

  7. Risk Management by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Look, I'm all for getting as much Zmapp to patients as is possible. I think a lot of people are agreement on this.

    But we also need to do something about the effed up process of the approval of drugs and vaccines for these deadly diseases.

    I'm thinking specifically about the malaria vaccine that has been known to be effective since '96/'97, but which has been held up for extended testing trials by (IIRC) the British drug regulators, who again put a hold on it this spring because it might not be entirely effective in newborn infants.

    Meanwhile two million children are dying every year from malaria. This is a really, really, really, screwed up situation, and we have an ethical obligation to do what we can to put an end to these processes.

    Even if the latest delay is "only" three months, that's a half million kids or so. It's unconscionable how poor the risk management analysis is - the perfect can be the very, very deadly enemy of the good. And so can drug-agency bureaucrats.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    1. Re:Risk Management by Nemyst · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's easy to say when the sample of drugs you have is those that have passed approval. If the requirements are relaxed, it's very hard to say what would happen without having access to information only the FDA has.

      Perhaps nothing would happen. That'd be great, but it's also a gamble. It's possible that the relaxed requirements mean a side-effect slips through unnoticed, causing as great or greater harm later in the future. It's unlikely, but it's possible, and it only takes one for everyone to panic. Probably the best example we have of what could happen is Thalidomide.

  8. Re:Donations... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Dear Sir Kaenneth,

    Please permit me to make your acquaintance in so informal a manner. This is necessitated by my urgent need to reach a dependable and trust worthy foreign partner to transfer international donations to Africa. My name is Dr. William Monroe, colleague of esteemed Ebola expert Dr. John Shumejda of Nigeria.

    Please sir, as a humanitarian, if you can wire $189,000,000.00 USD to my Bank of Bahamas account, I can assure you that 98% of that contribution will not disappear into the 'overhead' of which you speak.

    Yours Sincerely,
    Dr. William Monroe

  9. Re: Good news everybody by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Bad ones"

    That isn't how evolution works. What you meant was genetically less fit to resist predation by lions and tigers before having a chance to breed if and only if lions and tigers are a significant cause of that species not being able to breed in comparison to other factors.

    I, for one, don't give a shit about genetic fitness against Ebola. Thinking that somehow these people (or animals) "deserve" to be weeded out because they are "bad" in the sense there is something wrong with them is completely unfounded, and is nothing more than blaming the victim.

    Or trolling.

    --
    while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
  10. Re:Donations... by mhotchin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF)
    http://www.doctorswithoutborde...

  11. Re:ZMapp experiments done on tobacco plants. by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

    I don't care if your bleeding from the eyeballs, leave my cigarettes alone!

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  12. Re:Good news everybody by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

    . I'm still anxiously awaiting another test of the infinite monkey hypothesis.

    The last time a test was attempted, we just got a few letters typed over and over and over, and the typewriters ended up full of poo. :(

    Essentially a J.K. Rowling novel.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  13. Re:Donations... by OneAhead · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yeah, they're the first NGO that started fighting this outbreak, and have the biggest presence in the area. Which is not a surprise given that they're one of very few (possibly even the only one) equipped to deal with biosafety level 4 diseases in the wild. With only a little bit of hyperbole, one could say they moved in where a lot of other NGOs moved out (and rightly so).

    That said, all their qualified personnel and relevant equipment is already invested into this outbreak, so a significant part of any money you donate to them right now will go to their other programs - mainly Syria at the moment. However, don't let that stop you. Apart from Syria obviously needing some attention too, MSF is pretty efficient in the way thy use their money and their approach is uncompromisingly impartial and science-driven, to the point of being shunned by deep religious conservatives (*gasp*, promoting the use of condoms) and people with political agendas (*gasp*, daring to criticize the dire humanitarian circumstances in Palestine). Which explains why they're relatively unpopular in the USA compared to the rest of the western world.