Preliminary data suggest that two Ebola treatments have proven to be effective in preventing death during a clinical trial conducted amidst the deadly ongoing outbreak in Congo.
The trial began in November, with participants randomly given one of four experimental treatments (SN: 3/16/19, p. 9). Data from 499 patients reviewed August 9 suggest that those people taking one of two antibody treatments — mAb114 or REGN-EB3 — had a greater chance of survival than those on the antiviral drug remdesivir or the antibody treatment ZMapp. Researchers reported the trial results in a news release August 12, but these findings have yet to be finalized.
“One thing that won’t change is that those two therapies are better than the other two — that’s for sure,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. The trial now enters a phase with only the two most effective treatments in order to gather more data on their safety and the immune response to each drug. Researchers won’t study enough patients, however, to determine which drug works best.
Head over to Science News to know more about the results of the treatments.
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(Image Credit: World Bank/ Vincent Tremeau)