Q: What is ZMapp?
A: It is a cocktail of specially engineered antibodies
designed to target and inactivate the Ebola virus.
Q: What do we know
about whether it works?
A: Very little. Various antibodies have been tested in small
numbers of monkeys but not people. In one study, 43 percent of treated monkeys
survived when the drug was given after the animals showed symptoms.
Q: Why isn't ZMapp
being tested more widely to find out if it works in people?
A: There's not enough available. The antibodies are grown
inside tobacco plants and then extracted and purified, a slow process. US
officials have estimated that only a modest amount could be produced in two or
three months, unless some way to speed production is found.
Q: What does it mean
that the two American aid workers who received the drug are reported to be
slowly improving?
A: Top US health officials stress that there's no way to
know if the drug really helped, or if those two patients would have been among
the 40 percent of people who are surviving this outbreak anyway. Without human
studies, there also isn't any way to know if the drug might harm instead of
help.
Q: How were the
Americans and Spanish priest chosen to get some of those limited doses, rather
than Africans?
A: The international relief organisation Samaritan's Purse
and Emory University Hospital requested that the manufacturer provide some of
the drug for the two Americans, and the manufacturer agreed. As for the Spanish
missionary priest, it wasn't clear exactly how Spanish officials obtained a
dose that apparently was in Geneva. The priest also was infected in Liberia and
is in isolation at a Madrid hospital.
Q: How is Liberia getting the drug?
A: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it had
helped connect Liberia with the manufacturer. “Since the drug was shipped for
use outside the US, appropriate export procedures had to be followed,” the
statement said.
Q: Are any other
drugs in the pipeline?
A: Canada's Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp is developing a
drug that targets Ebola's genetic material. The FDA had halted a small safety
study with questions about a reaction in healthy volunteers. Last week, Tekmira
announced that FDA had modified its restriction, clearing a roadblock to possible
experimental use in infected patients. The company said at the time that it was
“carefully evaluating options.”
A handful of other companies are in earlier stages of drug
development and a possible vaccine to prevent the disease is expected to begin
first-stage safety studies sometime in the autumn.
Q: If experimental
drugs won't stop the outbreak, what will?
A: Experts say old-fashioned public health measures: rapidly
finding and isolating the sick, quarantining those exposed and educating the
public on how to avoid the risk of infection. Ebola is spread through direct
contact with bodily fluids of sick patients. Two main drivers of the outbreak
are thought to be improper infection control during patient care and
traditional but risky burial practices that see mourners handling bodies that
are still infectious.
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