Study participant receives NIAID/GSK Ebola vaccine candidateFLICKR, NIAIDOne strategy to fighting the ongoing Ebola epidemic in West Africa—which to date has affected more than 18,000 people and killed nearly 7,000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)—is to transfuse plasma or blood donated by Ebola survivors into those who have contracted the disease. The belief is that antibodies or other immune factors that helped the survivors clear the virus could help other patients still suffering the effects of the virus to join the 30 percent of people who don’t die from Ebola infection. Three trials to test this so-called convalescent blood therapy are now getting underway at the heart of the outbreak.
Most Ebola survivors could serve as donors if transfusions prove safe and effective in clinical trials. Vaccine makers, on the other hand, still face monumental production and distribution challenges, even if their candidates are successful in ongoing early-stage trials.
Late last week in Liberia, researchers collected plasma from survivors at the ELWA 2 hospital in Monrovia and transfused the first patient as part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded trial, which is being run by the Hinckley, Ohio-based contract research organization ClinicalRM, in collaboration with national health authorities and the WHO, Nature reported. Over the next 10 weeks, 70 patients will participate in the trial, including control patients who will not receive a transfusion. Researchers will then compare viral loads between treated and untreated ...
