Experimental Ebola drug cured 100% of monkeys tested | Hacker News Reader

Experimental Ebola drug cured 100% of monkeys tested

usatoday.com

80 pointszefi15 comments

The best way to control the current outbreak is with traditional measures: diagnosing patients, isolating them, tracing their contacts and testing them, and extending the process out in circles, until all exposed patients have been isolated.

I was wondering about the software they use to track this process, if any? Say, for example, you get the manifest for a plane where a passenger was infected. If you wanted to track infections from that point, which is unlikely but possible, that's a lot of work. And if it spirals out from there?

Geisbert notes that about half of Ebola patients survive without taking ZMapp.

What is the actual mortality rate? I have heard reports varying from 40% to 90%.

It varies by subtype.

Indeed. There were 5 classified types prior to this outbreak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebolavirus#Classification

With the Zaire strain, now just called plain Ebola virus, normally with an observed fatality rate of 83% or 76% (two figures from different Wikipedia articles) and up to 90%, and at the other end a Reston ebolavirus with no fatalities among exposed lab workers.

This West African outbreak has been sequenced and is a Zaire strain with plenty of mutations that perhaps have significantly dropped its fatality rate, see this section and the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_West_Africa_Ebola_virus_o...

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/guinea/index.html

Current outbreak appears to be around 50-55% mortality.

According to More or Less, 90% was the mortality rate of one particular historical outbreak.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moreorless

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/moreorless/moreor...

edit - It also says that 52% is the current figure on this outbreak and that if you count up all cases, then Ebola has a mortality rate of 60-65%.

This is using antibodies, i.e. works on the principle of passive immunity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_immunity

By calling it a "drug", and that its way of action 'is unknown' etc., the article makes it sound a bit like they were talking about the engineering of a new chemical compound, when in fact the way of action seems straight-forward. The new work will probably just be in details of the production and perhaps embedding or some such of the antibodies.

Maybe my rejection stems from my native language (German) calling treatments like this "passive Impfung", literally "passive vaccination", while we seem to reserve the word "Medikament" (drug) for non-biologic actors.

I really hope someday computer simulations become so detailed and accurate that we don't have to test on animals anymore.

There's a small bit about this in the video "Humans Need Not Apply". Go to the ~10 minute mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Last I checked I thought we were more closely related to primates not monkeys--not sure if that's of any significance.

Apes, I think you mean; both apes and monkeys are primates.

Monkeys are primates.

Oh, let's see if I can remember the main groupings...

Primates ->

> Lower Primates ->

> > Tarsiers

> > Aye-Ayes

> > Lorises

> Lemurs & Red Pandas

> Simians ->

> > New World Monkeys

> > Old World Monkeys

> Hominoids ->

> > Gibbons & Siamangs

> > Great Apes ->

> > > Orangutans

> > > Gorillas

> > > Chimpanzees ->

> > > > Chimpanzee

> > > > Bonobo

> > > > Humans

Wiki has humans and chimpanzees/bonobos in different subtribes, so humans wouldn't be under "Chimpanzees ->":

  Tribe Hominini
   Subtribe Panina
    Genus Pan
     Chimpanzee (common chimpanzee), Pan troglodytes
      Central chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes troglodytes
      Western chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes verus
      Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes ellioti
      Eastern chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii
     Bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee), Pan paniscus
   Subtribe Hominina
    Genus Homo
     Human, Homo sapiens
      Anatomically modern human, Homo sapiens sapiens

Yeah, it's not the mainstream classification but it's been proposed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Chimpanzee) and I find it entertaining. So. ;)

I particularly like Pans Narrans as a classification.

Though I suspect that Pans Superbia might be unfortunately closer to the mark.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com