5 ms·

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

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
  Unfortunately, this piece is affected by typical science journalism that hypes up everything a titch. Fundamentally, this treatment is a textbook case of applied RNA interference (RNAi). While it is really awesome to see RNAi used in a medical context (these nano-payloads of RNA are really interesting), all the caveats of RNAi apply. If the virus has a highly variable DNA sequence, different RNAi sequences will need to be designed, validated, and grown up in lab for each viral strain. Viral strains will need to be identified upon infection so the right RNAi sequences are used, which can increase time until treatment. We won't be seeing this technique used on a highly variable virus like HIV or the common cold anytime soon, because these viruses mutate incredibly quickly within the host.
  - ihodes 16y ago
    Yes, typical journalist hype by this hack Steven Salzberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salzberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salzberg). Ah, "the Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park"? Well nevermind. And while yes, RNAi has been around for a while, nothing like this has been done with the technology. This is a breakthrough.
    - bbgm 16y ago
      Iddo Friedberg has a nice review of the paper as well http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2010/05/29/a-cure-for-ebola/ http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2010/05/29/a-cure-for-ebola... The key for me is this part "this is the first time that siRNA treatment has been shown to work in primate models of a human disease." That's a big deal under any circumstances.
  - salzberg789 16y ago
    You shouldn't speculate without doing a bit of homework first. The Ebola virus is reported to have a mutation rate that is approximately 100 times slower than the influenza virus, making it more like other human viruses, which also tend to mutate slowly. (HIV is an extreme outlier with its extraordinary mutation rate.) The RNAi sequences used in this experiment will likely work for quite a few years. The investigators plan to do safety tests in humans next, but they have some preliminary data on safety this is positive.

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
Unfortunately, this piece is affected by typical science journalism that hypes up everything a titch. Fundamentally, this treatment is a textbook case of applied RNA interference (RNAi). While it is really awesome to see RNAi used in a medical context (these nano-payloads of RNA are really interesting), all the caveats of RNAi apply. If the virus has a highly variable DNA sequence, different RNAi sequences will need to be designed, validated, and grown up in lab for each viral strain. Viral strains will need to be identified upon infection so the right RNAi sequences are used, which can increase time until treatment. We won't be seeing this technique used on a highly variable virus like HIV or the common cold anytime soon, because these viruses mutate incredibly quickly within the host.
- ihodes 16y ago
  Yes, typical journalist hype by this hack Steven Salzberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salzberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salzberg). Ah, "the Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park"? Well nevermind. And while yes, RNAi has been around for a while, nothing like this has been done with the technology. This is a breakthrough.
  - bbgm 16y ago
    Iddo Friedberg has a nice review of the paper as well http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2010/05/29/a-cure-for-ebola/ http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2010/05/29/a-cure-for-ebola... The key for me is this part "this is the first time that siRNA treatment has been shown to work in primate models of a human disease." That's a big deal under any circumstances.
- salzberg789 16y ago
  You shouldn't speculate without doing a bit of homework first. The Ebola virus is reported to have a mutation rate that is approximately 100 times slower than the influenza virus, making it more like other human viruses, which also tend to mutate slowly. (HIV is an extreme outlier with its extraordinary mutation rate.) The RNAi sequences used in this experiment will likely work for quite a few years. The investigators plan to do safety tests in humans next, but they have some preliminary data on safety this is positive.