What's Next for Experimental Ebola Drug?

Ebola Outbreak in Africa

A Spanish priest Tuesday became the first European to have died from Ebola, even after the country’s health ministry confirmed they had received the experimental serum called ZMapp designed to fight Ebola.

Father Miguel Pajares, 75, died Tuesday after contracting the disease while treating patients in Liberia. Pajares was evacuated to Spain last Thursday and was being treated at a Madrid hospital when he died.

The hospital where Pajares was treated has not confirmed the use of ZMapp due to privacy concerns. But if Pajares was treated he would be only the third person to receive the treatment and the first to die from Ebola after being treated with ZMapp.

Experts said that Pajares’ death does not reveal much about the effectiveness of the drug itself, but highlights why public health officials are pushing for a more regimented trial of the drug.

Here are some information regarding the Ebola virus disease

Key facts

• Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness in humans.
• EVD outbreaks have a case fatality rate of up to 90%.
• EVD outbreaks occur primarily in remote villages in Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests.
• The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission.
• Fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are considered to be the natural host of the Ebola virus.
• Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. No licensed specific treatment or vaccine is available for use in people or animals.

Signs and symptoms

EVD is a severe acute viral illness often characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes.

People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory.

The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms, is 2 to 21 days.