Ebola virus may soon be preventable and treatable

Scientists claim 90% chance of survival for Ebola victims in new trial.
The two experimental drugs - REGN-EB3 and mAb114 lower the death rate.
Ebola is one of the deadliest viral diseases in the world.

Scientists are claiming that there is a headway for one of the deadliest diseases in the world, Ebola, after promising results in two of the four experimental drugs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The two experimental drugs - an antibody cocktail called REGN-EB3 developed by Regeneron and a monoclonal antibody called mAb114 - will now be offered to all patients infected with the viral disease in an ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The drugs improved 'survival rates from the disease more than two other treatments being tested', according to the scientists.

The other two drugs - ZMapp, made by Mapp Bio-pharmaceutical, and Remdesivir, made by Gilead Sciences - and those products will be now dropped, Reuters quoted Anthony Fauci, one of the researchers co-leading the trial as saying.

According to the researchers, 49% of the patients on ZMapp and 53% on Remdesivir died in the study. In comparison, 29% of the patients on REGN-EB3 and 34% on mAb114 died.

Muyembe was a veteran of the team that investigated the very first known outbreak of Ebola in what was then Zaire, in 1976 AFP

Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of Congo’s Institute National de Recherche Biomédicale in DRC, said the whole will no longer say Ebola is incurable.

Anthony Fauci, NIAID’s director, also said the results were “very good news” for the fight against Ebola.

The agency said that of the patients who were brought into treatment centres with low levels of virus detected in their blood, 94% who got REGN-EB3 and 89% on mAb114 survived.