U.S. government, military helped with Ebola drug
U.S. government, military helped with Ebola drug
Posted Monday, Aug. 04, 2014
Two American aid workers infected with Ebola are getting an experimental drug so novel it has never been tested for safety in humans and was only identified as a potential treatment earlier this year, thanks to a longstanding research program by the U.S. government and the military.
The workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, are improving, although it’s impossible to know whether the treatment is the reason or they are recovering on their own, as others who have survived Ebola have done. Brantly, a former resident of John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, is being treated at a special isolation unit at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital.
Writebol was expected to be flown there Tuesday in the same specially equipped plane that brought Brantly. She has now received two doses of the experimental treatment and is showing marked improvement, said Palmer Holt, a spokesman for SIM, the aid organization for which she works.
On Monday, she was walking with assistance, Holt said.
“Her husband, David, told me Sunday her appetite has improved and she requested one of her favorite dishes — Liberian potato soup — and coffee,” Bruce Johnson, president of SIM USA, said in a statement Monday.
A spokeswoman for Brantly’s employer, Samaritan’s Purse, said Monday evening that he no longer wants his condition and treatment shared, for his privacy. But earlier reports indicated he also was improving.
Both were infected in Liberia, one of four West African nations dealing with the world’s largest Ebola outbreak. On Monday, the World Health Organization said the death toll had increased from 729 to 887 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, and that more than 1,600 people have been infected.
In another development, the Nigerian Health Minister said a doctor who had helped treat Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American man who died July 25 days after arriving in Nigeria, has been confirmed to have the deadly disease. Tests are pending for three other people who also treated Sawyer and are showing symptoms.
The experimental treatment the U.S. aid workers are getting is called ZMapp and is made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. of San Diego. It is aimed at boosting the immune system’s efforts to fight off Ebola and comes from the Nicotiana plant, according to a statement on Mapp’s website, www.mappbio.com.
In a statement, the company said it was working with LeafBio of San Diego, Defyrus Inc. of Toronto, the U.S. government and the Public Health Agency of Canada on development of the drug, identified as a possible treatment in January.
The statement says they are “cooperating with appropriate government agencies to increase production as quickly as possible,” but gives no details on who else might receive it or when.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration must grant permission to use experimental treatments in the United States, but the FDA does not have authority over the use of such a drug in other countries. The aid workers were first treated in Liberia. An FDA spokeswoman said she could not confirm or deny whether the FDA granted access to any experimental therapy for the aid workers while in the U.S.
Writebol, 59, received two doses of the experimental treatment while in Liberia. Johnson was hesitant to credit the treatment for her improvement.
“Ebola is a tricky virus and one day you can be up and the next day down. One day is not indicative of the outcome,” he said. But “we’re grateful this medicine was available.”
Brantly, 33, also received a unit of blood from a 14-year-old boy, an Ebola survivor, who had been under his care.
Samaritan’s Purse initiated the events that led to the two workers getting ZMapp, according to a statement Monday by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The Boone, North Carolina-based charity contacted U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials in Liberia to discuss experimental treatments and were referred to an NIH scientist in Liberia.
The scientist answered some questions and referred them to the companies but was not officially representing the NIH and had no “official role in procuring, transporting, approving, or administering the experimental products,” the statement says.
The Defense Department has long had a hand in researching infectious diseases, including Ebola. During much of the Cold War period this served two purposes: to keep abreast of diseases that could limit the effectiveness of troops deployed abroad and to be prepared if biological agents were used as weapons.
In Fort Worth, where Brantly attended Southside Church of Christ while working at JPS Hospital, members of the church gathered Sunday and prayed for him, Writebol and the people of West Africa. More than 30 members of the Liberian Community Association of Dallas-Fort Worth attended the Sunday morning service.
Southside, on Hemphill Street south of the Medical District, also collected more than $20,000 for Brantly’s family and for Samaritan’s Purse.
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