Ebola cure, or not?

[MrBrad]

A couple of weeks ago Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok announced that they had found a cure for ebola. However, I've heard nothing more about this. In fact, just this afternoon BBC radio reported that a vaccine may be developed in the United States in about a year's time. Nothing was said about the cure that is had been discovered in Thailand.

Why isn't this cure reported on world news, and the medicines being sent to west Africa where it's so drastically needed? Why the secrecy?

Does anyone else know what Bangkok scientists are doing about this?

Here's the first report: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/764359-we-have-the-cure-for-ebola-bangkoks-siriraj-hospital-announces/?hl=%20ebola

[partington]

There was no cure.

It was an irresponsible claim, or to put it frankly, a lie. I do not know whether it was the newspapers' irresponsible reporting or the scientists' irresponsible claim that resulted in this minor research advance being called "a cure".

The scientists merely developed an antibody to the Ebola virus. This has been done many times over the last 20 years, and while the antibody might one day prove useful in treating the disease, it might also be no use whatsoever. There is already a treatment called Zmapp , which consists of three separate antibodies similar to the single one that the Thais developed, and this is currently undergoing tests in the US. Zmapp is at least 5 years ahead of the Thai antibody.

There is probably a decade's more research work to be done before anyone can say whether this Siriraj antibody is of any use or not in treating Ebola. A single antibody on its own is unlikely to be an effective treatment in any case, which is why the Zmapp drug was designed as a mixture of three.

Edited October 19, 2014 by partington

[Jingthing]

Here is some credible info on where the treatment/vaccine part of it is at:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n20/paul-farmer/diary

Fourth, the knowledge gained from the response must be built on. Every attempt to prevent the spread of Ebola should involve proper care for quarantined patients. Even without a vaccine or Ebola-specific therapies, it’s possible to imagine this bringing a marked drop in case-fatality rates. But we need specific therapy, better and faster diagnosis, and effective vaccines. The vaccines and drugs required to treat so-called ‘emerging infectious diseases’ do not exist because of what James Surowiecki has called ‘Ebolanomics’. ‘When a disease’s victims are both poor and not very numerous,’ he says, ‘that’s a double whammy. On both scores, a drug for Ebola looks like a bad investment.’ The Onion recently ran the headline: ‘Experts: Ebola vaccine at least fifty white people away.’

It needn’t be this way. Several vaccines are ready for clinical trials; a number of treatments – including ZMapp, a combination of monoclonal antibodies developed by a pharmaceutical and a biodefence company, and RNA interference agents – are also ready for trial. The process should be fast-tracked, and willing Ebola survivors (who should be immune) recruited by the thousand into this work as well as into providing clinical care.

[Aussieroaming]

It's interesting that the survivor antibodies are supposedly pretty helpful. Natures free cure .........

[Sheryl]

Interesting and very significant, since it means people do form an effective immune response, which in turn means that prevention through vaccination is possible. Hopefully all the publicity will help fast track the vaccine research, but even so, it does take time to come up with a formulation that is both effective and reasonably safe.

[Thai at Heart]

Um no.