Is there a cure for Ebola?

[R Glass]

I don’t want to come across as Paranoid but I do not trust our Government to tell us the truth about how the Ebola Virus is spread. They certainly have not put very much emphasis on this.  

Is there a cure for Ebola?
“Right now, there is no cure or vaccine. Doctors typically provide supportive care to patients, which may include oxygen, fluids, blood transfusions and treating subsequent infections. A few patients infected with the virus have been given experimental treatments, including doses of a promising drug called ZMapp. But supplies of ZMapp were limited and have since run out.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-virus-in-us-what-you-need-to-know-now/

As for now, not only do we not have an approved treatment, we do not even have any of the “promising experimental supplies” left. Those of us that have gone through HCV are far to familiar with how long it takes the FDA to approve new Treatments.
If someone knows something I don’t please post it.

[Dee1956]

I am a little worried, Doctors Without Borders said they had two patients transported to France mid September.  One was a doctor, another was a nurse.  I may be oblivious; I had not heard of anyone getting it in France.

I just found this information about a couple of patients in Germany
http://www.thelocal.de/20141003/ugandan-doctor-hospitalized-for-ebola-in-germany

On BBC news there was a vague reference to two patients in New Haven
It is strange that they are telling us not to worry while CNN is reporting on it 24/7
I may stop searching for now. :)
I normally don't watch the news, now I remember why :)

[R Glass]

Who knows? It is a possibility the respiratory infection and Pink Eye problem could have been caused by the experimental treatment. This is one of the reasons it takes so long for drugs to be approved. They have to go through several trials to not only make sure it works but it is safe to take. It may just be a coincidence but I do find that his symptoms strange for someone that hasn’t been out of the hospital for very long. I also find it strange that he has a respiratory infection and Pink Eye. I’ve had Pink Eye a couple of times but never had a cough with it. Time will soon tell.

“Dr. Richard Sacra was hospitalized Saturday for observation and is in stable condition with a cough and conjunctivitis, commonly known as pinkeye.”

http://nypost.com/2014/10/05/american-doctor-cured-of-ebola-back-in-the-hospital/

I just heard that the New Treatment is very promising and is being “Fast Tracked”. The bad news is, they said even being Fast Tracked it will take about a year before it will be released.

I’m not in “panic mode” but I do find it strange that they are trying so hard to keep people from panicking. It seemed like they were trying to get people to panic over The Swine Flu and the West Nile Virus.

[teko]

Every day that goes by, that no one else is infected, if we are getting truth, does make me feel a little more secure I gotta say....If they cure this one and another seeps thru and is caught even then, I will feel better. If this one dies and another pops up, yeah, not so much.

[brice1967]

I don't feel secure in feeling that we will get the straight news on this.  I did find it a little scary and perhaps premature when they said they "cured" the two doctors.

[teko]

Bottom line here is, it doesn't do any good to panic, but we do need to be alert.
I just read on the crawler at the bottom of the screen that the one doctor who was brought here, cured of e bola is now back in the hospital due to respiratory complications. Currently the word is, they have no reason to think it a recurrence of ebola but the test will not be back until tomorrow...hmmm.

[Dee1956]

Thank you for asking this question.

[Dee1956]

The Navy was working with hemorrhagic fever back in 2008.  At that time I was told by scientists that Ribivarin was being tried for that outbreak.

The scientists were assisting in Bo Sierra Leone with pregnant women at I think Mercy Hospital with Najala U in coordination with a church in Virginia.

I was surprised when people started panicking about the Ebola as I thought it was the same as the Hemorrhagic Fever from 2008.
I was recently told that was called Lasa Fever

I am worried, trying not to panic.

[R Glass]

That shocked me when I first read it but then I read the study. We've Been there Done that. If Peg-Intron was the new promising tx, we should be immune to Ebola.

[teko]

hmmm. I heard Duncan is now in critical condition. Poor soul... I hope he makes it...

[desrt]

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/194/Supplement_1/S19.full

".....
As mentioned by Bray et al. [41], the recombinant B/D chimeric form of human IFN-α has proven to be highly protective against Ebola virus in mice: a single dose given on the day of challenge only delayed death, but a 5- to 7-day course of the same dosage, begun on day 0, 1, or 2 after infection, was highly protective......."



Stock up on Peg-Intron.

[brice1967]

Rest assured, the government is not and will not tell us everything we need to know.  They are not in that business.  They are in the business of securing their futures at the cost of the "commoners".  There is a lot of money to be had here, and so many of our favorite politicians have their lil hands in the cookie jar.

P.S.
ACA will not cure this.  It's not meant to address issues like this, obviously.  The CDC is ill prepared to deal with this and in fact, I don't think they could be prepared to deal with this.  It's just not their business.

[Dee1956]

Thank you for posting this.

I read that this is Mr Duncan's first visit here, he tried to  help a woman get into a hospital in Liberia.  He took care of her, took her home when  no room for her.  She died of Ebola on the 15th.  He flew here on the 20th went to the hospital on the 25th was sent home for two days until an ambulance was called.

Some are saying he knew coming here was his only chance to survive since the hospitals have no room.

There is now someone in DC who came from Nigeria and is exhibiting signs of Ebola as well as a reporter who was hired by NBC news.  They hired him and a day later he came down with Ebola.  After being around all of the people from NBC;they are all coming home and are going to quarantine themselves for 21 days in their homes.  One of them is Dr Nancy Snyder.

I just read that the sales of face masks has gone up by 18,000% on Amazon.

After reading all of the above, it sounds like a movie.

I don't know what to think.  I do agree that I have no false sense of security
They can't even take care of one quarantined family.  How will they handle more?.
Take care everyone
Dee

[teko]

Bottom line for me is. Anytime you have planes flying in and out of infected areas, it is a world problem and not restricted to any one country. This should be a global initiative to handle this situation. Look at this one isolated case and how it has been handled to date. I dont think it gives us a feeling of security and who is to say that if this guy got thru, there will not be others, and add to that that there is no cure and your survival depends largely on the state of your own immune system. That would put children, elderly and sick in this country at great risk. But maybe the powers that be might not think that a bad idea after all? Like I said, I just dont believe any of em and I get the feelin we are being managed more than anything else. God forbid people get scared and quit spending.

[Vance2335]

When disease is contained to 3rd world countries it is not worth the time or effort for science to do much about it. When it becomes a problem for the world is when science takes notice. You have so much money going towards cancer, HIV and other things that effect millions something that effects hundreds is not going to get the research it needs for cure/treatment.

As for heath care...it is better to develop treatment then a cure as you will always make money from treatment. As in the case of cancer and HIV more $ is going to find better treatments then finding a cure. But even a cure for those 2 are very daunting tasks that fail time and time again due to many factors.

Overall I don't think we have much to worry about as our heath care system is better then in Liberia, as why you see the mass amounts of death.

But overall you look at what has gone on in medicine and you see more and more of these "super bugs" as Dr's have made it a common practice to medicate for no reason. Which causes the body and the virus to develop a tolerance/immunity which causes bigger issues. For example gonorrhea was easily treatable for years and years, now about 10% of the bacteria is resistant to the common treatment because it has evolved and science has not devloped anything new for it in years.

[Barb135]

Yeah, it's all about the money -- don't we know that's what healthcare is all about these days?  If there's no money in it, there's no treatment.

I followed your link and we all need to pay close attention, because I think we agree that the government might not be telling us everything we need to know.

I know there are quite a few of us in this group with compromised immune systems, including myself and a few that monitor the forum, but won't post. We need to maintain due diligence, but it's not time to panic yet...

I might suggest that when you go shopping you make use of the disinfectant wipes provided to clean the carts (many of our stores provide them and if yours don't, carry a pack in your pocket (or as my husband does, ask your wife to carry some), stay well out cough/sneeze distance and check any toilet you're going to use for "dribbles", or blood (or use a disinfectant wipe on it) - I've read that disinfectant wipes are effective against the virus... I'll be off to Walmart tomorrow buy travel packs to carry in my pockets/purse... it's not panic, it's common sense and we should probably be doing this anyway... if we did, maybe we could eradicate the flu or the common cold.  

While I don't think we have a reason to panic, I do think we should be proactive in protecting ourselves...

[teko]

Yes, and I thought I heard he lived with someone who was sick as well. Regardless, it seems he had to kno he was at risk before coming here, and he denied it and is how he got in to begin with. They are saying if he lied on the forms (which he seems to have done), they will prosecute

[R Glass]

http://news.yahoo.com/texas-ebola-patients-neighborhood-scores-sick-140016735.html

For some reason it wouldn’t let me copy it but according to this article, it was traced back to him from helping a Pregnant woman in a Taxi. Within weeks everyone that helped her that day is either sick or dead from Ebola.

Generally, I’m the first one that calls people “Chicken Little” but this Ebola has my attention.

[R Glass]

So, it’s all about the Money.


“This not only means that other diseases with broader reaches, such as HIV and AIDS, take precedence in scientific research, but that drug companies have had virtually no financial incentive to spend millions of dollars on medicines and inoculations for so few people -- especially people who lack the means to pay for it.

"There's nothing magical about getting a drug or a vaccine for Ebola. We likely would've had it years ago if there were major investments on the part of a company,"  


Now let’s Fast Forward-

“not to mention newly vigorous interest from investors –“



I’m not buying in to this either. How could they possibly know how many people have died from Ebola in Africa?

  “the virus had killed just over 1,500 people since 1976 before the current crisis”

[Barb135]

"The world has known about Ebola for almost 40 years, yet there's no cure or vaccine on the market.

That could change amid worldwide attention to the ongoing outbreak of the virus in West Africa, which has claimed more than 3,000 lives already, and the first diagnosis of a patient with the disease in the United States. But not for a few more years -- at least.

Why have the scientific community, the pharmaceutical industry and world governments failed so far to come up with a way to treat or prevent this ghastly illness? Because the scientific and economics challenges are stark, and the experimental medicines available, even those already being used to treat Ebola patients, haven't been proved to be effective or safe.

Drug and vaccine development is characterized by failure, a fact that's easy to forget when so many miracle cures exist.

And despite gruesome symptoms including bleeding from the eyes, ears and mouth, and the fact that most Ebola patients die, 33 outbreaks of the virus had killed just over 1,500 people since 1976 before the current crisis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This not only means that other diseases with broader reaches, such as HIV and AIDS, take precedence in scientific research, but that drug companies have had virtually no financial incentive to spend millions of dollars on medicines and inoculations for so few people -- especially people who lack the means to pay for it.

"There's nothing magical about getting a drug or a vaccine for Ebola. We likely would've had it years ago if there were major investments on the part of a company," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. "The scientific challenges are not profound."

The scale and horrors of Ebola in West Africa, combined with diagnoses in Western countries such as the U.S., will spur greater interest among drug developers and speed possible treatments to market, Fauci predicted.

"What you'll see now is that this dramatic, highly publicized outbreak of Ebola is going to catalyze a lot of interest in the field of making antivirals for these types of diseases," Fauci said.

A handful of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies already were working on medicines, vaccinations and tests for Ebola, many of which received funding from the National Institutes of Health.

ZMapp, under development by a California firm called Mapp Biopharmaceutical, has garnered attention since the African outbreak began and the company depleted its stock by shipping medicine overseas. The U.S. government, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust are working with the company and another firm to boost production of the experimental treatment, The New York Times reported.

In addition, a Massachusetts company, Sarepta Therapeutics, is working on another drug, as are Canada's Tekmira Pharmaceuticals and North Carolina's BioCryst Pharmaceuticals. A unit of British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is researching a vaccine, and Japan's Fujifilm is eyeing an existing flu medicine as an Ebola treatment.

In spite of these efforts and the intensified push from Western governments -- not to mention newly vigorous interest from investors -- experts cautioned against expecting the kind of quick turnaround of a cure or vaccine performed by scientists in the movies.

"We are certainly not at the beginning of these developments, but we're probably still realistically somewhere between five and 10 years away from having something that's on the market," said Ted Ross, program director for vaccines and viral immunity at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute of Florida in Port Saint Lucie.

The timeline could be shortened to three or four years with a concerted push by governments, amplified by the efforts of wealthy charities and other nongovernmental organizations, Ross said.

Governments have a lot of weight, and money, to throw around, which has enabled scientists and pharmaceutical companies to make relatively rapid strides when the focus is there.

Fauci cited two significant examples as precedent. The massive global push to study HIV and AIDS led not only to treatments for that ailment, but to progress in developing drugs for other diseases, such as Hepatitis C, he said. More recently, concern about new, unpreventable strains of influenza spurred advances in flu research that may lead to the creation of a single shot that can protect against all forms of the virus, he said.

That doesn't mean it's easy, even with all possible support from governments, pharmaceutical companies or anyone else. Inventing medicines and vaccines and diagnostic tests is difficult, takes time and is more likely to fail than succeed, Ross said.

"It really takes almost a decade from concept to finally put the drug into a vial that you're ready to hand to a physician or a nurse," Ross said. "Very few drugs ever make it to market."

Scientists must follow a basic set of procedures throughout that can take an unknown amount of time and pose challenges all along, any one of which could scuttle the entire enterprise, Ross said.

It starts out with the basic, fundamental research of understanding what the disease is, how it works and how it might be counteracted. If those stages are successful and researchers have an idea of a way to attack the disease, they have to test it on animals to see whether it works at all, and whether it's safe.

Before a treatment or vaccine can be tested on living humans, scientists must conduct two rounds of research on human cells and tissue, first for safety and then for effectiveness. If all of that is successful, a drug company then has to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration and regulators in other countries to sell the product, which can take years.

During those painstaking steps, researchers and drugmakers always have to think about money. "It costs millions of dollars to do human trials," Ross said.

"Even if you have a drug that is effective, it really sometimes comes down to the economics of it. If it's going to cost you way more than what a person can afford, they're not going to be able to manufacture it," Ross said. "There won't be a market for it."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/ebola-cure_n_5915892.html

[teko]

From what I understand the 2 healthcare workers that were brought here, got the last two experimental doses of the only thing we had to treat ebola with. They said at that time that it would take a long time to reproduce it, much less mass produce it, so no. we currently have nothing other than our good quality health support care to offer. The survival rate is 50 percent, and depends on the patients immune system.....

And they said it could only spread thru bodily fluids, yet they have been tracing about a 100 people this victim came in contact with, and those include the ER staff and others where he was seen the first time among others, so that to me? is a little contradictory....Bodily fluids like sweat,, snot, tears, saliva etc, do not contain huge amounts of the virus like blood does, but they also said it can live on surfaces for up to three days and in a mans semen for up to 3 months....

I remember back when we had the anthrax scare and at that time the only treatment known to work for that was cipro. Everyone was stockpiling cipro. But in the case of ebola, the drug companies are rushing to try to be the first to develop a cure.

They better hurry up imo.

[mikesimon]

I'd expect that if there is a drug effective - ZMapp, for example - it will get to "market" a lot faster than the HCV drugs have. The gravity of the situation demands it - in my opinion.

The Dallas situation really has been a cluster f&%k so far so I am not inclined to trust the government much myself. We have looked pretty incompetent thus far.