Drug defeats deadly Ebola virus infection

An RNA-based drug has treated an infection of the deadly Ebola virus – the first drug to have been shown to do so in all recipients.

Ebola Zaire virus kills 90 per cent of the people it infects. There are experimental vaccines that protect people given it before they are exposed to the virus, but there has been no drug to help those who are already infected.

Now Thomas Geisbert of the Boston University School of Medicine in Massachusetts and colleagues have designed a small interfering RNA molecule that sabotages three of the virus's vital genes. Four rhesus monkeys infected with the virus all survived after receiving the drug for seven days, starting 30 minutes after infection

The treatment could be used within five years, says Geisbert, but further experiments and trials are needed to establish how long after infection it is effective.

via Drug defeats deadly Ebola virus infection - health - 28 May 2010 - New Scientist.