WHO starts survey of Ebola treatments, says none proven so far

UPDATE:   Additonal information on the WHO discussions of potential Ebola treatments.

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REUTERS                                                      Nov. 14, 2014

By Tom Miles

GENEVA --The World Health Organization (WHO) has begun assessing more than 120 potential treatments for Ebola patients, it said on Friday, but so far has found none that definitely work, and some that definitely do not....

The apparent effect of ZMapp or other drugs that have been tried may simply be a result of the good care that the patients had received, or the fact that they were well-nourished before they fell sick, or because of other medicines, Friede said.

Medecins Sans Frontieres plans to start trials next month of the drugs brincidofovir, from the U.S. firm Chimerix, and favipiravir, from Japan's Fujifilm, and to see how well blood plasma from Ebola survivors may work in curing those still infected....

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/14/us-health-ebola-who-treatments-idUSKCN0IY1CR20141114

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Additional Information:

WHO: These Are The Most Promising Ebola Treatments

TIME MAGAZINE                                                                                                      Nov. 14, 2014

By Alice Park

On Nov. 11 and 12, the World Health Organization (WHO) called the world’s leaders on Ebola to decide which promising experimental therapies to begin rigorously testing in order to fight the West Africa outbreak.

There are many encouraging candidates, from the blood of Ebola survivors to drugs that use the latest developments in genetic engineering. None, however, have been properly tested for safety or effectiveness in human patients. Some have been tested in animal models of the disease and have successfully controlled the virus, but the gold standard for any human treatment, be it drug or vaccine, is testing in patients who have been affected by a disease. Since scientists can’t ethically intentionally infect volunteers with the Ebola virus, regulatory agencies like WHO are considering moving some of these treatments directly from animal studies to infected patients in West Africa.

The committee also reviewed information from 18 Ebola patients who were treated outside of West Africa, some with the experimental therapies.

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https://time.com/3585685/ebola-treatments-who/