Ebola Drug Shows Promising Results in Heart of Congo Outbreak
- Results may signal the first treatment for the deadly disease
- Experimental drug slashes death rates to 29% in study
A World Health Organization worker decontaminates the house of a pastor who has just tested positive for Ebola in Beni, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Photographer: Sally Hayden/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
An experimental drug is helping patients infected with Ebola survive the virus as it sweeps across the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an outbreak has already killed at least 1,800 people.
Preliminary results were so positive with a treatment made by U.S. drugmaker Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., called REGN-EB3, that the trial was stopped early to get the drug to Ebola patients sooner. They will now receive either Regeneron’s drug or mAb114, a treatment being developed by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases that also appeared promising.