4 ms·

A Breakthrough Cure for Ebola

112 points by ihodes 16y ago

aaronbrethorst 16y ago
run directly towards the slowest virus, since it has a wounded leg? (sorry, couldn't resist :-) In all seriousness, though, this is very exciting. I wonder how easily this technique could be adapted to work on other viruses, like HIV.
- ars 16y ago
  It would probably only work while HIV was active, but not when it hides inside a T cell. (HIV is very unusual in that regard.) It's called "HIV latent reservoir" and it's the reason nothing has worked. This is unlikely to change that.
  - aaronbrethorst 16y ago
    Pardon my ignorance, but if an individual's HIV is 'active' (I'd be curious to know more about the definition of active in this case) does that mean that's the case across every cell of their body, or might some cells be active and others inactive?
    - ars 16y ago
      Active means the virus is either attempting to infect a cell, or copying itself. When it's inactive it just sits in the cell doing nothing. Some are active, some are not. I believe it starts with lots of active viruses, then many go dormant, while others continue infecting. Then pretty much all of them go dormant, while slowly activating in small numbers over a long time (20 years even). It's sort of a war of attrition, the virus kills immunity (T) cells slowly, over time. It's possible to prevent it from killing cells (which will then recover to normal levels), but the virus keeps hiding in other cells.
slapshot 16y ago
Fascinating to see that they started with the most interesting virus rather than the most commercially valuable virus. Stopping the common cold is probably worth 100 times more money, but stopping Ebola is more scientifically interesting. Kudos.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ihodes 16y ago
  It may have more to do with the fact that monkeys cannot contract rhinovirus. Therefore, no test subjects with moderately similar physiology. That and Ebola is cool.
- ars 16y ago
  The cold might mutate too fast for this to work well.
- celoyd 16y ago
  More power to them. But notice they have defense funding. As the article hints, right now, if someone with Ebola got on a plane to Cairo or Johannesburg, billions of people would die. That’s not worth much in the $10 × 1,000,000,000 people way of the common cold, but it will get you enormous government grants and a huge amount of prestige.
  - rjurney 16y ago
    Wikipedia makes a city-disaster seem unlikely. It is not much airborne, and isolation-nursing prevents spread.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Unlikely. I just checked the wikipedia article, and the Ebola virus is not naturally transmitted as an aerosol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#Transmission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#Transmission). It is transmitted through bodily fluids, including supertiny droblets but that won't effect more than the ten people closest to the infected person on that plane, and before they have a chance to infect anybody else the worlds medical system will have indentified and dealt with the case. In addition, the virus kills within 2-21 days, so it is unlikely to have time to spread to that many people from each source. Therefore, this won't be the new black death, but that won't stop the media from comming all over the story.
nixy 16y ago
All known strains of Ebola virus have very high mortality rates, ranging from 25% to 90%, and there is no cure. This is not entirely true, the Ebola Reston strain is seemingly harmless to human beings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_ebolavirus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_ebolavirus
maxklein 16y ago
The problem with Ebola is not really the cure. It's the factors around the disease that make it very difficult to cure. First of all, Ebola is very similar to malaria. In all the areas that Ebola occurs, malaria also occurs, and it would be impossible for normal people to tell the difference. Malaria is a very common disease and the infected usually just take anti-malarial tablets and wait it out, which I assume they also do for Ebola. By the time the symptoms diverge away from Malaria - i.e, the blood starts coming out, it's very difficult to cure. The people taking care of the infected person would have already been sick, and the original person would already be pretty close to death, that is unlikely that this treatment will help him. I'm not sure when the treatment starts getting effective, but the described article starts treatment 30 minutes after the introduction of the virus. This will not happen in the real world. In the real world, treatment is likely going to start when the disease is pretty advanced all round. Ebola is also a disease that is going to stay in underdeveloped isolated areas. It puts the person in bed so quickly that the person would hardly have a chance to infect anyone in countries with proper hospital systems. The diagnoses equipment for Ebola are also not so accurate, and the response for it is expensive, so false scares are going to have more of a damage than the actual disease.
- asdfghjkl1521 16y ago
  thanks, that really is a helful information
- philk 16y ago
  From the article itself: This is a breakthrough not only because it may give us a cure for an uncurable, incredibly nasty virus, but also because the same method might work for other viruses, and because we have woefully few effective antiviral treatments. The exciting thing is not that we have a potential cure for a rare[1], exotic[2] virus. The exciting thing is the technique and its potential applicability to other viruses. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks [2] Part of the reason they're probably using Ebola is to get DoD funding (ie in the anti-biowarfare space)
  - riahi 16y ago
tokenadult 16y ago
"They report a 100% success rate, although admittedly the test group was very small, just 4 rhesus monkeys. "This is a breakthrough" I'd hold off on the word "breakthrough" until a) there is replication of the result in a larger sample by other investigators and b) there are some human trials of the treatment. The technique is interesting, but it needs more study. http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  b) might take a while. I can't see anyone voluntarily getting infected by Ebola, and there haven't been any outbreaks recently.
Kilimanjaro 16y ago
"Ebola has very few genes - only 8. One of its genes, called L protein, is responsible for copying the virus itself. Two others, called VP24 and VP35, interfere with the human immune response, making it difficult for our immune system to defeat the virus." Genomics and nanomeds, now that's amazing!

112 points by ihodes 16y ago

run directly towards the slowest virus, since it has a wounded leg? (sorry, couldn't resist :-) In all seriousness, though, this is very exciting. I wonder how easily this technique could be adapted to work on other viruses, like HIV.

ars 16y ago
It would probably only work while HIV was active, but not when it hides inside a T cell. (HIV is very unusual in that regard.) It's called "HIV latent reservoir" and it's the reason nothing has worked. This is unlikely to change that.
- aaronbrethorst 16y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but if an individual's HIV is 'active' (I'd be curious to know more about the definition of active in this case) does that mean that's the case across every cell of their body, or might some cells be active and others inactive?
  - ars 16y ago
    Active means the virus is either attempting to infect a cell, or copying itself. When it's inactive it just sits in the cell doing nothing. Some are active, some are not. I believe it starts with lots of active viruses, then many go dormant, while others continue infecting. Then pretty much all of them go dormant, while slowly activating in small numbers over a long time (20 years even). It's sort of a war of attrition, the virus kills immunity (T) cells slowly, over time. It's possible to prevent it from killing cells (which will then recover to normal levels), but the virus keeps hiding in other cells.

slapshot 16y ago

Fascinating to see that they started with the most interesting virus rather than the most commercially valuable virus. Stopping the common cold is probably worth 100 times more money, but stopping Ebola is more scientifically interesting. Kudos.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ihodes 16y ago
It may have more to do with the fact that monkeys cannot contract rhinovirus. Therefore, no test subjects with moderately similar physiology. That and Ebola is cool.
ars 16y ago
The cold might mutate too fast for this to work well.
celoyd 16y ago
More power to them. But notice they have defense funding. As the article hints, right now, if someone with Ebola got on a plane to Cairo or Johannesburg, billions of people would die. That’s not worth much in the $10 × 1,000,000,000 people way of the common cold, but it will get you enormous government grants and a huge amount of prestige.
- rjurney 16y ago
  Wikipedia makes a city-disaster seem unlikely. It is not much airborne, and isolation-nursing prevents spread.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Unlikely. I just checked the wikipedia article, and the Ebola virus is not naturally transmitted as an aerosol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#Transmission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#Transmission). It is transmitted through bodily fluids, including supertiny droblets but that won't effect more than the ten people closest to the infected person on that plane, and before they have a chance to infect anybody else the worlds medical system will have indentified and dealt with the case. In addition, the virus kills within 2-21 days, so it is unlikely to have time to spread to that many people from each source. Therefore, this won't be the new black death, but that won't stop the media from comming all over the story.

nixy 16y ago

All known strains of Ebola virus have very high mortality rates, ranging from 25% to 90%, and there is no cure. This is not entirely true, the Ebola Reston strain is seemingly harmless to human beings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_ebolavirus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_ebolavirus

maxklein 16y ago

The problem with Ebola is not really the cure. It's the factors around the disease that make it very difficult to cure. First of all, Ebola is very similar to malaria. In all the areas that Ebola occurs, malaria also occurs, and it would be impossible for normal people to tell the difference. Malaria is a very common disease and the infected usually just take anti-malarial tablets and wait it out, which I assume they also do for Ebola. By the time the symptoms diverge away from Malaria - i.e, the blood starts coming out, it's very difficult to cure. The people taking care of the infected person would have already been sick, and the original person would already be pretty close to death, that is unlikely that this treatment will help him. I'm not sure when the treatment starts getting effective, but the described article starts treatment 30 minutes after the introduction of the virus. This will not happen in the real world. In the real world, treatment is likely going to start when the disease is pretty advanced all round. Ebola is also a disease that is going to stay in underdeveloped isolated areas. It puts the person in bed so quickly that the person would hardly have a chance to infect anyone in countries with proper hospital systems. The diagnoses equipment for Ebola are also not so accurate, and the response for it is expensive, so false scares are going to have more of a damage than the actual disease.

asdfghjkl1521 16y ago
thanks, that really is a helful information
philk 16y ago
From the article itself: This is a breakthrough not only because it may give us a cure for an uncurable, incredibly nasty virus, but also because the same method might work for other viruses, and because we have woefully few effective antiviral treatments. The exciting thing is not that we have a potential cure for a rare[1], exotic[2] virus. The exciting thing is the technique and its potential applicability to other viruses. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks [2] Part of the reason they're probably using Ebola is to get DoD funding (ie in the anti-biowarfare space)
- riahi 16y ago

tokenadult 16y ago

"They report a 100% success rate, although admittedly the test group was very small, just 4 rhesus monkeys. "This is a breakthrough" I'd hold off on the word "breakthrough" until a) there is replication of the result in a larger sample by other investigators and b) there are some human trials of the treatment. The technique is interesting, but it needs more study. http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

sliverstorm 16y ago
b) might take a while. I can't see anyone voluntarily getting infected by Ebola, and there haven't been any outbreaks recently.

Kilimanjaro 16y ago

"Ebola has very few genes - only 8. One of its genes, called L protein, is responsible for copying the virus itself. Two others, called VP24 and VP35, interfere with the human immune response, making it difficult for our immune system to defeat the virus." Genomics and nanomeds, now that's amazing!