"Ebola treatments are to be tested in
West Africa for the first time," said the Wellcome Trust, a British
biomedical research charity, which is funding the effort with a 3.2
million pound grant (USD 5.2 million).
The charity said there had been some
experiments with treatments already "but none has yet been tested for
efficacy and safety in humans with Ebola" and scientists underlined that
months of cautious work lay ahead.
David Heymann, Professor of Infectious
Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine suggested that plasmapheresis, where serum is taken from
survivors and their antibodies given to patients, could be a valuable
tool in the battle to contain the epidemic.
"This would be a sustainable method of
providing support to patients if it were effective, but unfortunately it
has never been tested in a clinical setting, even though it has been
used ad hoc many times," he said at a press conference at Wellcome's
headquarters in London.
Heymann said that they hoped to collect enough serum for trials to begin once suitable sites had been identified.
Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer
for England, said that William Pooley, the British nurse who recovered
after contracting the disease in Sierra Leone, had volunteered his blood
plasma.
Pooley was treated with ZMapp, and
clinical tests of this experimental drug, along with anti-viral drugs,
will also begin once possible sites for the trials in the affected
countries have been established.
Health workers must also set up
infrastructure and recruit personnel, pending WHO recommendations on
which products to test first. The first tests could take place "by
November", according to Peter Horby, Senior Clinical Research Fellow at
Oxford University.
Wellcome added that the initiative, whose
partners include the World Health Organisation (WHO), would aim to
"fast-track trials of the most promising drugs", but warned that it
would take several months before any treatments bore fruit, and that
they would only succeed as part of a wide raft of initiatives to combat
the disease.
Several pharmaceutical companies are taking part in the tests, and will provide key data on safety and production abilities.
Source:Latest News from World News
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