Here’s Everything We Know About The ‘Secret Serum’ Used To Treat An American With Ebola
Kevin Loria
BusinessInsider.com
Aug. 4, 2014
Both of the Ebola-infected U.S. citizens in Liberia received a rare dose of what news reports called a “secret serum” to treat the virus before being transported to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, according to a CNN report. And while some people do fight off the disease on their own, in the case of the two Americans, that experimental serum may have saved their lives.
As Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol waited in a Liberian hospital, someone from the National Institutes of Health reached out to Samaritan’s Purse, one of the two North Carolina-based Christian relief groups the two were working with, and offered to have vials of an experimental drug called ZMapp sent to Liberia, according to CNN’s unnamed source.
Although the Food and Drug Administration does allow experimental drugs to occasionally be distributed in life-threatening circumstances without approval under the expanded access or “compassionate use” conditions, it’s not yet clear whether that approval was granted in this case or not.
A spokesperson for the FDA told Business Insider that federal law and FDA regulations prohibit them from commenting on specific products, as that information is considered confidential.
An Emergency Treatment
However it was approved, three frozen vials of ZMapp, a drug being developed by Mapp Biopharmaceutical, were flown to Liberia and arrived the morning of Thursday July 31.
The serum needed eight to 10 hours to thaw.
Brantly, who had been sick for nine days already, reportedly had asked that Writebol receive the first dose, as he was younger and thought he had a better chance of surviving. (It’s unclear from the CNN story why the doses apparently were not all ready at the same time.)
But his condition worsened as the first dose thawed, and CNN reports that he told his doctors, “I am going to die.”
The Rest…HERE
