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Ebola Is Now Curable

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Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#31

Post by Izkata »

_Nat_ wrote: post #16

The title calling it "curable" feels a bit misleading. To explain... Ebola's a viral infection, like the common cold or the flu. If someone gets sick with it, then usually their immune system should fight it off naturally, just like the common cold or the flu. And just like a cold/flu, there hasn't really been a cure for it; instead, Ebola sufferers would be put on bed-rest with fluids to resist dehydration, fever ma…

Wellll, an crude guess from 5 years ago made the point that 50% is in African countries, and US healthcare may drop it to 30% on its own: https://www.livescience.com/48263-ebola-mortality-us-africa....

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#32

Post by akkartik »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #14

Much-needed Outline.com of the article: https://outline.com/MJaPqX Wired.com is almost literally unreadable. It's a caricature of all that's wrong with modern web design. Is everyone else seeing what I'm seeing? http://u.cubeupload.com/temp9871/wired.png

I recently got into the habit of swinging Firefox's reader view (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clu...) on a hair trigger. A single click on any of my devices, it cuts an awesome swathe through the internet jungle. For now.

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#33

Post by mbuinl989 »

Medicalidiot wrote: post #12

I want to know how long it will take for Ebola to evolve a resistance to this therapy.

Its an RNA virus, so like flu it evolves all the time. RNA viruses replicate because there is no check on the NA helix when a cell replicates, unlike DNA which by virtue of being a double helix, a basic checksum method to ensure consistency of the DNA helix which the adaptive immune system relies on to do its job.

It is why flu vaccines can be ineffective by the end of the flu season. It takes about 2 weeks to grow a flu virus in sterile eggs, the most "high tech" solution known to man currently. Every time someone with flu sneezes, they are emitting new multiple strains of the flu virus.

The other problem with Ebola is it can hide in parts of the body where the adaptive immune system does not work, places like the eye and testes. So even though the virus may not show up in test results, it could reappear when someone's immune system is weakened sometime in the future. There are other ways to kill it though. Just for reference, someone I know works at Porton Down in the UK, MOD facility, they told me Ebola is nothing compared to some of the viruses and bacteria they have in their facilities. In other words there are far worse things to be worried about than Ebola.

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#34

Post by [deleted] »

lonelappde wrote: post #30
xkcd-sucks wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpacking the name totally is even more brutal! "necro" -- "death" "lysis" -- "busting open" "epidermal" -- "skin" "syndrome" -- "no known cause" However, it's a little unclear why TEN is a point of comparison to Ebola, as one is a transmissible disease and one is something that happens to unlucky people typically in response to common small-molecule drugs. I guess TEN sounds like a probable side effect of antiviral…

The comparison is to show that even in technologically advanced societies, there are diseases with 30% survival rates.

[deleted]

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#35

Post by [deleted] »

taneq wrote: post #20
throwaway5752 wrote: post #5

It's great news, but they're observing a 30% mortality rate for the "cure". Absent medical intervention there is still a nontrivial survival rate (mortality rate of 75-90%). With supporting medical treatment before this new treatment - fluid support, etc - I think it's up to 50%? It sounds like the monoclonal antibody treatment has improved odds of survival from 1:10-1:2 to 2:3. edit: The 6% figure is population rest…

If I were facing a 75-90% chance of dying, I think I’d be pretty happy to reduce that to 6-30%.

[deleted]

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#36

Post by contravariant »

baxtr wrote: post #26
DoreenMichele wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a point of comparison: Toxic epidermal necrolysis, a severe form of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, has about a 30% mortality rate. I understand it to be a first world problem typically caused by taking certain strong medications. It's a severe and often deadly allergic reaction. (I'm not going to provide links because both Wikipedia entries have disturbing photos. I've verified that I'm spelling both correctly so…

Puh. The photos are really disturbing. I really recommend anyone not to do what I just did...

We really need some kind of image-less Wikipedia for things like this.

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#37

Post by contravariant »

_Nat_ wrote: post #16

The title calling it "curable" feels a bit misleading. To explain... Ebola's a viral infection, like the common cold or the flu. If someone gets sick with it, then usually their immune system should fight it off naturally, just like the common cold or the flu. And just like a cold/flu, there hasn't really been a cure for it; instead, Ebola sufferers would be put on bed-rest with fluids to resist dehydration, fever ma…

For a disease with a notoriously high mortality rate of at least 25% in the best of cases, a treatment that reduces this to 6% when started early enough seems like a cure to me. It just isn't 100% effective yet, and treatment needs to be started as early as possible, which is not dissimilar to a lot of other cures.

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#38

Post by tomrod »

contravariant wrote: post #36
baxtr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Puh. The photos are really disturbing. I really recommend anyone not to do what I just did...

We really need some kind of image-less Wikipedia for things like this.

elinks browser for the win! I bet images can be blocked by extension as well.

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#39

Post by hinkley »

_Nat_ wrote: post #16

The title calling it "curable" feels a bit misleading. To explain... Ebola's a viral infection, like the common cold or the flu. If someone gets sick with it, then usually their immune system should fight it off naturally, just like the common cold or the flu. And just like a cold/flu, there hasn't really been a cure for it; instead, Ebola sufferers would be put on bed-rest with fluids to resist dehydration, fever ma…

Let's consider the real-world implications here.

Someone in your family, or village shows symptoms of Ebola. You get them diagnosed ASAP and there's still a one in three chance you're never going to see them again.

However, a confirmed case now has everybody's attention. Everyone who was exposed now has a 94% chance of surviving. Double the morbidity of the swine flu, yes. Still a quite stressful time for everybody, full of uncertainty and loss. But not the cultural-PTSD-inducing, apocalyptic catastrophe it was before.

Re: Ebola Is Now Curable

#40

Post by pvaldes »

Medicalidiot wrote: post #12

I want to know how long it will take for Ebola to evolve a resistance to this therapy.

> I want to know how long it will take for Ebola to evolve a resistance to this therapy.

Maybe never. A lot of time in any case, probably. Ebola is a plant's virus adapted to trees. Evolved to use bats (and probably arboreal snakes also) but can't survive for a long time in primates, and can't survive in soil at long term. We are a dead end for it. Would need infected humans munching some inedible leaves of a tropical tree or visiting hollow trunks where bats live.

News cases of Ebola in the future will be from a new strain, but this does not imply evolution or resistance. Is just that the number of ebola specimens in contact with humans is limited.

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