The drugs for battling Ebola might already exist . A showing of over 2,600 compound break how the antidepressant Zoloft and a drug used to treat bosom disease could be repurposed for the Ebola virus . The bulk of computer mouse treated with these drugs pull through their contagion .
There are lots of vaccines and drug being inquire right now for forestall or treating Ebola virus infections – but not one has been approved so far . Because both drugs in the study have already been okay by the US Food and Drug Administration , their condom disc imply that they could potentially promptly enter clinical testing for Ebola . Thefindingswere published inScience Translational Medicinethis week .
A team led by Gene Olinger from theUS Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseasestested 2,635 FDA - approved drugs , vulgar molecular probes and dietary supplements ( like vitamins , mineral , food additive ) againstZaire ebolavirus . They identified 30 promising drugs that had some anti - Ebola activity in a refinement .
After a serial of experimentation , they further pin down down the candidate list to the best two : the commonly used antidepressant drug Zoloft and a calcium communication channel blocker called Vascor , which is used to deal heart disease . The two belong to to the same class of drugs . Zoloft works by block the reuptake of the brain chemical serotonin , Discover explain , and Vascor treats high origin air pressure by keeping calcium from infix cell lining blood vessel wall to keep the vessels relax and elaborate .
Both protected mice from their Ebola infections by blocking the computer virus ' entryway into the hosts ’ cells . For each of the drugs , 10 mice were infected , then treat within an hour , and their survival was monitor for 28 days after computer virus exposure . Seven of the mice treated with Zoloft make it contagion ( that ’s 70 percent ) , and all of the mice treated with Vascor lived . All of the infected control mice ( those who were n’t treated ) were dead by twenty-four hour period 9 .
The concentrations of the drugs tested were higher than those that people would usually take , and we do n’t know if these larger State Department come with toxic side effects . Not to mention , well , it was a mouse study . But based on experiment in electric cell cultures , both drug are effective against two unlike species of the virus , Zaire ebolavirusandSudan ebolavirus , as well as three intimately - related viruses . And repurposing approved drugs , they write , might reduce the risk , clock time , and cost , at least in theory .
