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The scientists managed to rid six guinea pigs of Ebola through a treatment based on human antibodies. These antibodies were harvested from people who had received an experimental Ebola vaccine.
The new study, published in Cell Reports, is good news as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is currently suffering from an Ebola epidemic that is spreading at an unprecedented rate.
Ebola is a highly contagious and often fatal viral disease that causes fever and internal bleeding. Epidemics of the disease occur in various African countries, including the DRC, Uganda, Gabon and South Sudan. In the largest epidemic in the world, in West Africa between 2013 and 2016, 11,000 people died.
Currently, there is no specific treatment or treatment to control the disease; Affected individuals receive only intravenous fluids and body salts to balance their electrolytes, while doctors try to maintain their oxygen levels and blood pressure.
Finding an effective treatment against the disease would be extremely exciting. And this is where the new research comes in. Even though it is still very early (it has only been tested on a small number of non-human animals), the results look promising.
The treatment developed by the researchers is based on antibodies – tiny proteins produced by our immune system in response to an infection. Because specific antibodies are badociated with specific diseases, only someone exposed to the Ebola virus, whether through vaccination or infection, will carry Ebola antibodies in their blood.
To treat diseases, antibodies are usually taken from infected and survivors. However, this can involve risks. Instead, researchers collected antibodies in the blood of 11 volunteers during an experimental trial of Ebola vaccine in Oxford, UK. They managed to obtain 82 antibodies and combined a small number to form three different antibody badtails.
One of these badtails, consisting of four antibodies, helped to eliminate guinea pigs from Ebola virus when it was administered three days after the infection.
"The treatment of guinea pigs on the third day of infection with the badtail of four cross-reactive antibodies … made it possible to protect 100% a deadly virus. [Ebola virus] infection, without weight loss or clinical signs, "the researchers wrote.
If further research shows that this treatment is both safe and effective in humans (a process that unfortunately takes many years), a cure for this devastating disease could be considered. The team then plans to test their treatment with the ferret.
The researchers hope that their approach could also be used to fight against other viral diseases in the future.
"This study shows that a human vaccine trial is a golden opportunity to isolate antibodies that can be used effectively as a treatment," wrote the authors of the study, Pramila Rijal and Alain Townsend of Oxford University, in The Conversation. "This could be important to fight against emerging infections such as bird flu, SEA, SARS and Chikungunya viruses, for which we have no established drugs or therapeutic antibodies."
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