Ebola Treatment Using Plasma From Survivors Is Not Effective, Study Says

THE NEW YORK TIMES   By Sheri Fink, MD             January 7, 2007

A treatment once considered among the most promising for Ebola patients was not found to be effective in a study performed in Guinea, researchers reported Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The experimental treatment involved transfusions of blood plasma collected from Ebola survivors, whose immune systems develop antibodies to neutralize the virus. But the survival rate among the 84 patients in the study who received such transfusions last year was not significantly better than for previous patients who had not received transfusions.

Still, the researchers held out some hope for the treatment, known as convalescent plasma. “We can only say the way plasma was used didn’t show the effect we’d hoped for,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Johan van Griensven, who leads the unit for H.I.V. and neglected tropical diseases at the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine.

The plasma treatment was at one point the top experimental therapy recommended by the World Health Organization for testing during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa...

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/health/ebola-treatment-using-plasma-from-survivors-is-not-effective-study-says.html?_r=0

See Evaluation of Convalescent Plasma for Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea,

New England Journal article.