Treating Ebola after three days of infection
The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Tekmira Pharmaceutical Corp researchers got success in developing a post-exposure treatment against specific Ebola virus that is the reason behind the death of thousands of people in West Africa.
In April 22 edition of Journal Nature, it was demonstrated that the treatment against new Makona strain of Ebola need to be proved effective. This treatment will be tested in those animals that are infected with Ebola virus or show the symptoms of this virus. In this treatment, a short strand of RNA was used to attack Ebola virus and to interfere its design. This is a harmless treatment and it’s another advantage is its ability to quickly modify the viral strain.
According to Thomas Geisbert, professor of immunology and microbiology, they quickly changed the target to Makona strain of Ebola virus during testing. In this way, they were able to save all of their nonhuman primates. After three days of getting Ebola virus, infected started showing symptoms of disease and later researchers found detectable amount of virus in their blood.
However, those infected animals that were receiving the treatment had mild symptoms of viral infection and they recovered more quickly. This treatment also protected kidney and liver dysfunction along with blood disorder which happens in viral infections.
