Experimental drugs show 90 percent survival rates for Ebola patients | 16 August, 2019

The deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever is not incurable anymore. Scientists are a step closer to being able to cure the deadly Ebola fever after two experimental drugs showed survival rates of nearly 90 percent in a clinical trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Two experimental drugs — REGN-EB3 developed by Regeneron and a monoclonal antibody called mAb114 — will now be offered to all patients infected with the viral disease. Ebola has been spreading in eastern Congo since August 2018, with the outbreak killing at least 1,800 people.

  The drugs showed “clearly better” results, according to the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in a trial of four potential treatments being conducted during the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history, now entering its second year in DRC.

The drugs improved survival rates from the disease more than the two other treatments being tested — ZMapp (manufactured by Mapp Biopharmaceutical) and Remdesivir (made by Gilead Sciences). The agency said 49 percent of the patients on ZMapp and 53 percent on Remdesivir died in the study. In comparison, 29 percent of the patients on REGN-EB3 and 34 percent on mAb114 died. ZMapp and Remdevisir will now be dropped. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of Congo’s Institut National de RechercheBiomédicale in DRC, who co-led the trial, said: “From now on, we will no longer say that Ebola is incurable…these advances will help save thousands of lives.”

(Source: PharmaCompass)