Clinical trial for potential Ebola treatment started in MSF clinic in Guinea

MEDECINES SANS FRONTIERS                                     Dec. 26, 2014

A clinical trial for a possible treatment for Ebola started in Guinea on the 17th of December. The trial is led by the French medical research institute INSERM and is taking place at MSF’s Ebola Treatment Centre in Guéckédou, in the east of the country. Although every experimental treatment for Ebola patients offers hope, MSF remains prudent. There’s no guarantee that the drug will be effective and safe, and even if it is, it will not mean the end of the epidemic which continues to spread in the three most affected countries of West Africa.

The trial aims to include as many Ebola positive patients presenting at the MSF treatment centre in Guéckédou as possible. There will be no control group (group of patients who do not receive the treatment) in this study, as it is considered unethical to deny a group of patients the higher chance of survival that may come with the new treatment, especially given the high mortality of Ebola. Instead the outcomes of the patients will be measured against those of MSF patients admitted earlier this year, before the trial began. The first conclusive results are not expected before the first trimester of 2015....

The drug being used in Guéckédou is favipiravir, an antiviral drug produced by the Japanese company Toyama/FujiFilm. This drug has had good results against Ebola in animal studies and good safety results in humans when used for another viral infection. But as the drug has never been studied in humans against Ebola, it is important to wait for the results of the trial before declaring favipiravir a treatment for Ebola.

Read full statement.

http://www.msf.org/article/clinical-trial-potential-ebola-treatment-started-msf-clinic-guinea