Trying An Unproven Course, Gilead And Mapp Make Joint Therapies Available In Uganda For Sudan Variant Ebola.

This should well-impress on people who've not been following the developing crisis in Uganda closely. . . just how fraught the situation is becoming, with active exposure cases now as far away as. . . Pakistan, and Israel.

While both antibody candidates have separately been shown safe in humans, they haven't been tested in combination, at all yet. Moreover, they've only ever been given in response to infections with variants of the COVID virus. However, there they worked pretty well [recall that when infected, Tangerine was given Remdesivir and recovered well]. So, in a non-human study, when given together as a combination therapy, the two drug candidates helped about 80 per cent of primates with Sudan variant Ebola. . . survive.

Encouraging, but this would only then be a last ditch therapy -- if an infected health worker or patient agreed, after a fully-informed consent processes. And to be sure, it should only be given AFTER a positive test for the actual Sudan variant Ebolavirus, and as early thereafter as possible. It might save some lives -- but candidly, it is unknown. . . what the longer term cognitive side-effects might be.

So. . . we are down to using wholly non-approved therapeutics, since the emerging vaccine candidate is still wholly-unproven. That's. . . pretty serious:

. . .The U.S. sent Gilead Sciences Inc's remdesivir and Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc's experimental Ebola antibody drug MBP134 to Uganda as a response to the Ebola outbreak. . . .

The medicines will (it is hoped) help safeguard healthcare workers responding to an outbreak for which there is currently no vaccine. . . .

A study of MBP134 and remdesivir in non-human primates showed that either drug given individually rescued 20% of animals infected with the Sudan species of Ebola, but when given in combination, 80% of infected animals survived. . . .

Now you know -- but still agog over the guy walking in a cave a half mile from his home -- where his 300^th generation grandad was buried, about 9,000 years ago -- likely the most famous paleolithic man in Britain. Wow.

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