The fight against the Ebola virus continues to be one of the greatest hardships of the modern world. Doctors still don’t have an effective drug, or so it seemed until recently.
During the West African hemorrhagic fever epidemic (2014-2016), attempts were made to treat the drug favipiravir. The effects were not clear cut. Although the drug reduced the mortality of patients, but only those with low or moderate levels of the virus in the blood, and therefore those in whom the risk of death was not very high. In the more severely ill group, the efficacy of favipiravir was negligible. The drug was well tolerated in all groups.
French scientists from INSERM decided to test the effectiveness of higher – than previously recommended – doses of favipiravir. The study was carried out on animals – 26 monkeys were infected with the Gabon strain of the Ebola virus. Half of the patients were left untreated (control group) and the remainder were given favipiravir at doses of 100, 150 or 180 mg / kg / day, starting 48 hours after the virus injection.
None of the control animals survived for 10 days, and neither of the monkeys treated with 100 mg / kg favipiravir.
After three weeks of the experiment, 40 percent of them were alive. animals receiving 150 mg / kg of favipiravir and 60% of treated at a dose of 180 mg / kg.
The researchers also showed that the drug inhibited viral replication by a mechanism dependent on the concentration of the drug in the blood plasma.
The results of the experiment indicate that higher doses of favipiravir may produce better results than the doses recommended so far.
The tested drug regimen may be useful primarily in people who have been in contact with the virus, but have not yet developed symptoms. Further studies are needed to test the effectiveness of starting high doses of the drug at a later stage of the infection.