Ebola survivors' blood to undergo evaluation as treatment option

Date: Oct-24-2014 An international group of scientists is to test whether antibodies

from the blood and serum of Ebola survivors are safe and can help infected

people fight the virus. Trials are due to start in Guinea in a few

weeks.

The scientists, led by the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in

Antwerp, Belgium, have received €2.9 million ($3.7 million) from the

European Union (EU) to fund the project.

If the trial is successful, then blood and serum from recovered Ebola

patients - so-called convalescent serum - could be quickly scaled up to

provide short-term treatments for patients in West Africa while drugs and

vaccines are developed.

Substantial numbers of people who became infected in the current Ebola

outbreak have survived.

WHO recommend Ebola blood and serum therapies should be prioritized

A project funded by the EU will assess the safety and effectiveness of using blood and plasma from Ebola patients to help infected people fight the virus.

In September, experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) said after a meeting on Ebola treatments and vaccines, that "use of whole blood therapies and convalescent blood serums needs to be considered as a matter of priority."

Dr. Johan van Griensven, a researcher at ITM and coordinating

investigator for the project, says treatments using blood and plasma have

been around for a long time and have proved safe for other infectious

diseases. He adds:

"We want to find out whether this approach works for Ebola, is safe and

can be put into practice to reduce the number of deaths in the present

outbreak."

Dr. Griensven suggests when people in the communities affected see Ebola

survivors helping to stop the epidemic by donating blood, they will become

less fearful and more accepting of treatment.

Blood and plasma from recovered patients has been used before to treat

Ebola infection. In the 1995 outbreak in Kikwit, in the Democratic Republic

of the Congo (DRC), eight patients were treated with convalescent serum,

seven of whom survived. But it was not clear whether they would have

survived anyway, hence the need for carefully designed and controlled

trials.

'We're in a race against time on Ebola'

The €2.9 million grant is part of a larger fund of €24.4 million ($30.9 million) that the EU is giving to five projects, including this

one.

The other projects include a large-scale clinical trial of a potential

vaccine and trials to test new compounds to treat Ebola. The money is being

fast-tracked from the EU research and innovation program Horizon

2020.

José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission (EC), says:

"We're in a race against time on Ebola, and we must address both the

emergency situation and at the same time have a long term response."

Medical News Today recently learned that experts are also

calling for an investigation into  how

widespread immunity to Ebola might be. They say lives could be saved -

for example by recruiting people with natural immunity to assist with disease

control - if we knew whether a large segment of the population in the

afflicted regions is immune to Ebola.

Written by Catharine Paddock PhD

Not to be reproduced without permission.

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Courtesy: Medical News Today Note: Any medical information available in this news section is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional.