August 21, 2014

expert reaction to the news that the two US Ebola patients have been discharged from hospital

Two people infected with Ebola in Liberia have been discharged from hospital after being treated in the US.

Dr Ben Neuman, Virologist, University of Reading, said:

“This must be a day of great relief for the families of both recovered Ebola patients.  We know that ZMapp is very good at stopping Ebola in a lab, but we still don’t know whether it works well enough to make a difference in a sick person.  The death of Miguel Pajares, the elderly Spanish priest who caught Ebola in Liberia, despite being treated with ZMapp shows that at least in some situations, the treatment is not enough to turn the tide of infection.

New treatments usually need to be tested dozens to hundreds of patients in order to understand how well they work, and with current stocks of ZMapp exhausted for some months to come, this is unlikely.  Hopefully the Ebola outbreak will be fully contained before the next batch of treatment is ready.

Even if ZMapp turns out to work as well as we might hope, it would still be wise to have some other treatment options available in case the virus develops resistance.”

Declared interests

None declared