An Ebola treatment unit in neighboring LiberiaWIKIMEDIA, CDC The experimental treatment of people infected with Ebola using blood plasma from patients who survived Ebola infection has not significantly decreased mortality, according to a field evaluation published yesterday (January 7) in The New England Journal of Medicine. The trial was intended to test whether transfusions containing survivor-derived, Ebola-fighting antibodies might be effective at combatting the disease in other patients.
“Of course you would like to dream and see a very strong reduction in mortality, but we didn't see this,” coauthor Johan van Griensven of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, told Reuters.
The trial was carried out in Guinea, the site of the most recent outbreak, at a medical center in the nation’s capital, Conakry. Researchers compared death rates in a test group of 84 patients who received donated plasma with rates in a control group of 418 patients who received standard treatment.
They found slightly lower death rates in the plasma-treated group compared to the control group (31 percent and 38 percent, respectively), but the difference was not statistically significant. The effect of treatment was even less striking once additional factors ...
