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Ebola Breakthrough?
Sat Sep 27, 2014 at 10:59 AM PDT
Ebola Breakthrough?
by wilderness voice
Dr. Gobee Logan, a doctor in rural Liberia, has given an HIV drug, lamivudine, to 15 Ebola patients. 13 survived. Continue past the mating paramecium for more:
http://www.cnn.com/...
"My stomach was hurting; I was feeling weak; I was vomiting," Elizabeth Kundu, 23, says of her bout with the virus. "They gave me medicine, and I'm feeling fine. We take it, and we can eat -- we're feeling fine in our bodies." Kundu and the other 12 patients who took the lamivudine and survived, received the drug in the first five days or so of their illness. The two patients who died received it between days five and eight.
...
[Dr. Logan] also knows American researchers will say only a real study can prove effectiveness. ..."Our people are dying and you're taking about studies?" he said. "It's a matter of doing all that I can do as a doctor to save some people's lives."
...
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says that theoretically, Logan's approach has some merit.... other drugs in this class are being studied to treat Ebola
...
[Dr. Logan] also knows American researchers will say only a real study can prove effectiveness. ..."Our people are dying and you're taking about studies?" he said. "It's a matter of doing all that I can do as a doctor to save some people's lives."
...
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says that theoretically, Logan's approach has some merit.... other drugs in this class are being studied to treat Ebola
Lamivudine is a nucleoside analog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
These agents can be used against hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, herpes simplex, and HIV. Once they are phosphorylated, they work as antimetabolites by being similar enough to nucleotides to be incorporated into growing DNA strands; but they act as chain terminators and stop viral DNA Polymerase. They are not specific to viral DNA and also affect mitochondrial DNA. Because of this they have side effects such as bone marrow suppression.
Ebola virus uses RNA only and does not create any DNA. However, RNA requires nucleotides for its assembly just as does DNA, so it stands to reason it could work for Ebola as well as HIV. In any case, it seems to be working, since the chance of this large a proportion of patients surviving otherwise, without treatment, would be quite unlikely.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/27/1332809/-Ebola-Breakthrough
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