DEVELOPMENT
REPORT - Possible Ebola Virus Treatment
By Jill Moss
This is Robert Cohen with the VOA Special English Development Report.
Scientists appear to have made progress toward a treatment
for the Ebola virus. Most people infected with Ebola die.
Scientists at the United States Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases carried out the study. Their results
appear this month in the British medical publication The Lancet.
The scientists injected twelve monkeys with the Ebola
virus. Then nine of the animals received an experimental drug. It is
called recombinant nematode anticoagulant protein c-two. The monkeys
received the drug almost immediately or within twenty-four hours of
infection. They continued to receive the drug each day for up to fourteen
days.
Ebola normally kills any monkey it infects. But three
of the nine monkeys treated with the drug survived. The other six died;
however, the study says the drug delayed their death for several days.
The three monkeys left untreated also died.
Thomas Geisbert led the study. He says his team considered
the Ebola problem in a new way. In past studies, scientists tested anti-retroviral
medicine as a possible way to prevent infection. The Army researchers
instead examined ways to treat signs of the disease.
They say the experimental drug appears to stop the
effects of a protein called tissue factor. White blood cells release
this protein as they try to fight the infection. It causes the cells
to stick together, or clot. Ebola victims die from severe clotting and
bleeding inside the body. The experimental drug is made from hookworms,
which use the chemical to keep blood flowing in their victims.
Other scientists are also testing the drug as a treatment
for heart trouble.
Signs of the Ebola virus include a sudden rise in
body temperature, weakness, muscle pain and a headache. This progresses
into vomiting and diarrhea, and bleeding inside and outside the body.
Over the years, the Ebola virus has killed more than
one-thousand people in outbreaks in central Africa. It was first discovered
in nineteen-seventy-six, near the Ebola River, and is spread through
body fluids. The starting point in nature is not known.
The Republic of Congo has had a recent spread of the
disease. The World Health Organization says officials had reported twenty-nine
deaths as of December eleventh in the Mbomo District.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written
by Jill Moss. This is Robert Cohen.
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