An Ebola vaccine was found to be 100 percent successful, but additional large-scale trials need to take place before its effectiveness is confirmed.

The epidemic in West Africa may finally come to an end after a new drug proved 100 percent successful in recent trials. Research that would have normally taken a decade was completed in just 12 months, which means the speed of the drug’s development is unprecedented.

The rVSV-ZEBOV vaccination came from a collaboration between various scientists, doctors, donors and drug companies. The World Health Organization took on the risk of sponsoring the trials, which marks another unusual element in this promising but out-of-the-ordinary drug advancement.

The Trials

Tests to prove the Ebola vaccine effective were completed in just 12 months in an extremely fast round of drug trials.
Via: Cidrap

The trials were conducted in Guinea and included 4,000 people. The outbreaks have recently shifted and become regional in nature, which created a perfect structure for testing the new vaccine. Researchers employed a “ring” trial design, where all individuals in each of the contaminated clusters were given the drug.

In the villages where ebola was present, researchers vaccinated the family, friends and neighbors who came into contact with the sick person, except for children, adolescents and pregnant women to ensure their safety. About 50 percent of villagers received the vaccination.

Some clusters were given the vaccination before being diagnosed with ebola. 2,014 people were vaccinated immediately and none developed the sickness. They were tested after 10 days had passed and their bodies had been able to develop an immunity. Other clusters were tested with a delayed vaccination method after infection was introduced. Out of 2,380 people, only 16 cases were reported.

“This trial dared to use a highly innovative and pragmatic design, which allowed the team in Guinea to assess this vaccine in the middle of an epidemic,” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and one of the world’s leading experts on infectious disease. “It is a remarkable result which shows the power of equitable international partnerships and flexibility.”

The Supporters

The U.S., London, Norway, Canada, France, and Guinea collaborated to create the vaccine.
Via: Herzen

The drug is truly a result of widespread  international cooperation. The vaccine was originally developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada. Now, the vaccine is being tested and produced by Merck & Company, an American pharmaceutical company.

London’s biomedical research charity Wellcome Trust, the governments of Norway and Canada, Médecins sans Frontières from France, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine came together to fund the vaccine. The majority of the staff who conducted the trials were from Guinea, which was 90 percent responsible for carrying out its first round of clinical research.

“This partnership also shows that such critical work is possible in the midst of a terrible epidemic. It should change how the world responds to such emerging infectious disease threats,” Farrar said.

The Trials Continue

The trials were conducted in Guinea by a primarily domestic medical staff.
Via: Humanosphere

The trials garnered promising results that rVSV-ZEBOV could be the vaccine that will stop future outbreaks before they start. However, trials will have to continue on a larger scale before anything is confirmed. From now on, all individuals who have come into contact with ebola-sickened persons will be offered the vaccine. It is also been approved for use in children and adolescents.

Other potential vaccines, one from GlaxoSmithKline and the other from Johnson & Johnson, may or may not be tested.

The trial for the Merck vaccine was a race against time, but other infected countries are encouraged to immediately replicate ring vaccinations to stop transmission and protect front-line workers.

“This new vaccine, if the results hold up, may be the silver bullet against Ebola, helping to bring the current outbreak to zero and to control future outbreaks of this kind,” said Børge Brende, the foreign minister of Norway.

The post Unusually Fast Ebola Vaccine Trials Prove Successful appeared first on Citizens Report.

Alexis Benter

The Ebola epidemic in 2014 represents the largest outbreak of the deadly disease in the recorded history of mankind. The devastating illness has killed more than 10,000 people and affected more than 22,000.

While the virus sprinted through West African nations, many global organizations criticized the World Health Organization’s African leadership as being slow and weak to respond to the outbreak. Some cite the WHO’s response in Africa as a primary reason that the Ebola outbreak spread so quickly.

However, there is hope for the WHO’s African office. The organization appointed Dr. Matshidiso Moeti as the new regional director for Africa. Dr. Moeti brings a wide array of experience and knowledge to the organization, which was once seen as a resume booster for political officials with little experience but many connections.

Hope For A Better African System

Dr. Moeti acknowledged the WHO’s weak response to the initial Ebola outbreak and placed attention to Ebola as her number one priority. She plans on eliminating the spread of the disease and reducing the number of individuals affected to zero. While the tragedy surrounding Ebola is immense, Moeti hopes that it will serve as a catalyst to improve health care in Africa as a whole and make it a priority to improve the quality of health care in African nations.

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As a native of the Republic of Botswana, Moeti brings a wealth of knowledge regarding health care and infectious diseases. She possesses more than 35 years of health care experience with WHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS and the Botswana Ministry of Health. She was at the head of the WHO Regional Office for Africa’s attempts at treating the HIV/AIDS pandemic and was the Director of Noncommunicable Diseases from 2008 to 2011. Moeti received degrees in medical and public health from the University of London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Dr. Moeti provides an optimistic attitude towards the situation unfolding in Africa right now. This attitude will be crucial to ending the Ebola crisis as well as improving Africa’s health care system.

“I commit myself and colleagues to build on what we have created so far and I am confident that we will ride on the positive things happening in the Region,” said Moeti in an article on the World Health Organization’s website.

Featured image courtesy of: Facebook

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As headlines shift away from the Ebola outbreak that flourished in 2014, it’s easy to forget the disease that “sickened more than 200,000 people in West Africa, and killed at least 8,200, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).”

Although current data shows that the number of new cases is dropping in all three of the hardest-hit West African countries (Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea), and a recent study shows that Ebola could possibly be eliminated from the country of Liberia by June, scientists are working hard to create a vaccine for the disease.

“The idea of predicting infectious disease is relatively new. It’s not like weather predictions,” says Jeffrey Shaman, an associate professor at Mailman School of Public Health, in an interview with NPR. With this in mind, several companies are racing to test their experimental vaccines in an effort to put a standstill to the deadly disease.

Currently, there are three experimental vaccines that show signs of success. All three of them are being tested in humans in a remarkably fast pace due to the urgency of the situation.

The Top Three Most Promising Vaccinations

1. Johnson & Johnson’s Ebola Vaccine: The vaccine carries modified versions of a human cold virus and the smallpox virus, along with small parts of the genetic material of the Ebola virus. The little amount of Ebola contained may be enough to administer an immune response against the virus—meaning the body can find a way to resist the effects.

J & J started their Phase 1 trial to test the vaccine on healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, Jan. 6. The purpose of the first round is to identify potential side effects of the drug before it’s administered to a larger group of people. The vaccine is being developed by J & J’s Janssen Pharmaceutical Cos. and Bavarian Nordic. Over 400,000 regimens of this vaccine have been produced that could then be used in larger trials by April.

2. GlaxoSmithKline’s Ebola Vaccine: This vaccine is further along in its development, having its Phase 1 results already published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Nov. 26, 2014. The research showed that the vaccine appeared to be effective in test subjects.

The study was done on 20 healthy adult volunteers within the United States who eventually produced antibodies against the Ebola virus. According to Reuters, Phase 2 of the trial on a larger group of people may begin in February in Africa.

3. Merck & Co.’s Ebola Vaccine: This vaccine experienced some complications in its Phase 1 trials when one of the volunteers began to experience joint pain. Testing was immediately stopped, and resumed later on when the symptoms resolved without treatment, according to the University of Geneva hospital in Switzerland.

A lower dosage of the vaccine is now being administered in trials. There has long been a debate on the urgency of a vaccine development for this deadly infectious virus in the past—which you can read all about here.

But, with monetary and medical complications pushed to the side, a safe and effective Ebola vaccination is well on its way to being used in the real world. The Ebola vaccine is expected to be available for mass use in summer 2015 at the earliest, according to the WHO.

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