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Ebola vaccine trial proves 100% successful in Guinea - May Bring Current Epidemic to an End


Aladeen

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Saw this on reddit and just thought this would be some positive news for a change and didn't see it posted anywhere.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/31/ebola-vaccine-trial-proves-100-successful-in-guinea?CMP=twt_gu

Ebola vaccine trial proves 100% successful in Guinea

Rapid development and testing of drug may bring current epidemic in west Africa to an end and control future outbreaks, experts say.
The 100% success rate of a vaccination trial against Ebola in Guinea is very promising, says the World Heatlh Organisation
Sarah Boseley Health editor

Friday 31 July 2015 16.44 BST Last modified on Friday 31 July 2015 21.59 BST
A vaccine against Ebola has been shown to be 100% successful in trials conducted during the outbreak in Guinea and is likely to bring the west African epidemic to an end, experts say.

The results of the trials involving 4,000 people are remarkable because of the unprecedented speed with which the development of the vaccine and the testing were carried out.

Scientists, doctors, donors and drug companies collaborated to race the vaccine through a process that usually takes more than a decade in just 12 months.

“Having seen the devastating effects of Ebola on communities and even whole countries with my own eyes, I am very encouraged by today’s news,” said Børge Brende, the foreign minister of Norway, which helped fund the trial.


“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. I would like to thank all partners who have contributed to achieve this sensational result, due to an extraordinary and rapid collaborative effort,” he said on Friday.

There have been a total of 27,748 cases of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone up to 26 July, with 11,279 reported deaths, although the outcome of many cases is unknown and the toll will be significantly higher. In the week ending 26 July, there were just four new cases in Guinea and three in Sierra Leone.

Because of the diminishing number of Ebola cases in west Africa and the shifting nature of the epidemic, with many sudden small outbreaks occurring across the region, researchers hit on a novel design for the trial.

The “gold standard” approach would be to take a population at risk of Ebola and vaccinate half of them while giving the other half a placebo. Instead, the researchers used a “ring” design, similar to that which helped prove the smallpox vaccine worked in the 1970s.

When Ebola flared up in a village, researchers vaccinated all the contacts of the sick person who were willing – the family, friends and neighbours – and their immediate contacts. Children, adolescents and pregnant women were excluded because of an absence of safety data for them. In practice about 50% of people in these clusters were vaccinated.
In terms of vaccines, which are usually trialled in hundreds of thousands of people, Kierny said the numbers were small but highly promising. It is likely when larger numbers are collected that efficacy will be between 75% and 100%.

The future of two other potential Ebola vaccines, one from GlaxoSmithKline and the other from Johnson & Johnson, is now in question, because there are too few cases of Ebola for their trials to be completed.

The authors of the research said the ring design made it “logistically feasible” to conduct trials even in poor countries in the middle of a fading epidemic and it was a promising strategy for the future.

“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.

“Our hope is that this vaccine will now help bring this epidemic to an end and be available for the inevitable future Ebola epidemics. 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.”
John-Arne Røttingen, the head of infectious disease control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and chair of the trial’s steering group, said it had been a race against time in the most challenging circumstances.

“We are really pleased with the interim results,” he said. “It is really important to add the vaccine to the traditional hygiene measures we have used in the response so far. I believe this will be an important contribution to getting down to zero cases.”

Médecins sans Frontières said it was keen for the vaccine to be used in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where there were still cases.

Bertrand Draguez, MSF’s medical director, said: “In parallel with the ring vaccination we are also conducting a trial of the same vaccine on front-line workers. These people have worked tirelessly and put their lives at risk every day to take care of sick people. If the vaccine is effective, then we are already protecting them from the virus.

“With such high efficacy, all affected countries should immediately start and multiply ring vaccinations to break chains of transmission and vaccinate all front-line workers to protect them.”
Margaret Chan, the director general of of the WHO, said the vaccine trial’s success was a promising development. “The credit goes to the Guinean government, the people living in the communities and our partners in this project.”

The British government contributed £1m of the trial funding and has said it will increase that amount to help allow the testing to continue.

“Ebola has claimed thousands of lives and devastated communities across west Africa,” the international development secretary, Justine Greening, said. “The results of these UK-backed vaccine trials are hugely promising and represent a significant breakthrough in our battle against this deadly disease. The vaccine offers hope for a future where we never have to face an Ebola epidemic like this again.”

Trial data will now go to regulatory agencies in the hope of getting a licence for the vaccine that will allow it to be stockpiled for future Ebola epidemics. It is likely to be used only for people at risk in outbreaks and not given to whole populations.

The rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine is sometimes known as the Canadian vaccine as it was originally developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada before being sold to Merck to conclude the testing.

It's interesting to note that it was Developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

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Awesome!

Makes one wonder what other medical issues could be solved in 12 months rather than the expected decade.

Probably many but it's more profitable to keep people half sick and alive.

However this is very promising and would be quite a feat to have come up with a vaccine so quickly. Kudos to those involved.

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Probably many but it's more profitable to keep people half sick and alive.

Yes, I suppose that the rapid onset & high mortality rate of Ebola makes it difficult to make money on treatment, save for a vaccine.

It's a dark way of looking at medical research & services, but it's true that's hard to make money on hemorrhagic fevers...if the patient survives the peak of the infection & produces antibodies, they can recover in weeks...& then have a permanent immunity (which sounds so badass...I am immune to Ebola!).

Compare that to cancer, HIV, AIDS, Hep A,B,C, Herpes...patients can & often do live for years, constantly needing various treatments & pharmaceuticals...lots of money can be made.

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But But But Vaccines are the devil. They cause autism. They are poison. <---- Anti-Vaxers

But, but, but... do they know how these vaccines will test out? Notice that children, adolescents and pregnant women weren't given the vaccine, since they didn't know the effects yet.

Vaccines are fine when there is an issue. If I was living in West Africa and there was an outbreak, I'd sign up for the stuff. But giving vaccines to everybody for diseases that are now rare (fortunately) here is wasteful, and potentially harmful. I would rather take my chances getting polio than the potential for autism, liver damage, etc. that vaccines can cause.

Good job on those that made this vaccine happen... Ebola is scary stuff. But don't sign me up for my shot just yet. If you want to, that's up to you.

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But, but, but... do they know how these vaccines will test out? Notice that children, adolescents and pregnant women weren't given the vaccine, since they didn't know the effects yet.

Vaccines are fine when there is an issue. If I was living in West Africa and there was an outbreak, I'd sign up for the stuff. But giving vaccines to everybody for diseases that are now rare (fortunately) here is wasteful, and potentially harmful. I would rather take my chances getting polio than the potential for autism, liver damage, etc. that vaccines can cause.

Good job on those that made this vaccine happen... Ebola is scary stuff. But don't sign me up for my shot just yet. If you want to, that's up to you.

:huh:

Vaccines are there to prevent the issue in the first place, Jenny.

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:huh:

Vaccines are there to prevent the issue in the first place, Jenny.

Thanks for paying attention.

I agree vaccines are there to prevent it in the first place. What many "anti-vaxxers" have issues with (myself included) is that taking a vaccine for something with a very low chance of contraction compared with the risk inherent in the vaccine itself is not worth it.

Personally, I feel my odds of contracting the diseases many people in Canada/US get vaccinated for are very small, as I tend to take decent care of myself between my age, nutrition and lifestyle. If the odds were higher, I would consider it. But when a vaccine is not tested fully, or tests show a heightened risk of autism, liver or kidney damage (to name a few), I don't feel it is worth taking said vaccine at this point in my life, and attempts of others to force this on me is not acceptable.

Did I once say that anyone in West Africa should not take this particular vaccine??? No. I don't dispute anyone there trying the vaccine on those willing to try it, even if it wasn't fully tested. Given the risk, I may well have lined up for it myself had I been living there.

BTW, thanks for showing us all you are above weak-as$ attempts at condescension-via-namecalling. You controlled yourself just fine the last time we debated here, but I guess that ship has sailed.

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Thanks for paying attention.

I agree vaccines are there to prevent it in the first place. What many "anti-vaxxers" have issues with (myself included) is that taking a vaccine for something with a very low chance of contraction compared with the risk inherent in the vaccine itself is not worth it.

Personally, I feel my odds of contracting the diseases many people in Canada/US get vaccinated for are very small, as I tend to take decent care of myself between my age, nutrition and lifestyle. If the odds were higher, I would consider it. But when a vaccine is not tested fully, or tests show a heightened risk of autism, liver or kidney damage (to name a few), I don't feel it is worth taking said vaccine at this point in my life, and attempts of others to force this on me is not acceptable.

Did I once say that anyone in West Africa should not take this particular vaccine??? No. I don't dispute anyone there trying the vaccine on those willing to try it, even if it wasn't fully tested. Given the risk, I may well have lined up for it myself had I been living there.

BTW, thanks for showing us all you are above weak-as$ attempts at condescension-via-namecalling. You controlled yourself just fine the last time we debated here, but I guess that ship has sailed.

Jesus, don't be so sensitive. If I wanted to insult your intelligence, I would do that instead of poking some lighthearted fun. You seem to share Jenny's concerns, so why do you view it as a pejorative anyway?

I'm not nearly versed well enough to write a convincing argument and will leave that to someone more qualified. That said, I think you're completely wrong, and overall I view your position as ignorant and dangerous. You're entirely relying on heart immunity for your protection, and while you alone don't matter in the grand scheme, the more people think that way, the less vaccinated the populace become and the more outbreaks will occur. Look at measles in BC last year.

More than 200 cases of measles have been confirmed in the Fraser Valley, an outbreak health officials have linked to a region east of Vancouver where immunization rates are low in certain school and religious groups.
"It’s in those pockets of unimmunized or under-immunized kids where measles can, because it's such an infectious disease …. get into those populations," says Dr. John Spika, director general of the centre for immunization and respiratory infectious diseases at the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The B.C. case appears to be linked to a similar community in the Netherlands that is also not vaccinated, he says.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/b-c-measles-outbreak-reveals-vulnerability-of-unvaccinated-children-1.2585457

Anyway, I'm just going to go ahead and listen to medical consensus. You're free to endanger yourself and your children, we don't live in Soviet Russia after all. I do hope unvaccinated kids are not allowed to attend public schools though.

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Jesus, don't be so sensitive. If I wanted to insult your intelligence, I would do that instead of poking some lighthearted fun. You seem to share Jenny's concerns, so why do you view it as a pejorative anyway?

I'm not nearly versed well enough to write a convincing argument and will leave that to someone more qualified. That said, I think you're completely wrong, and overall I view your position as ignorant and dangerous. You're entirely relying on heart immunity for your protection, and while you alone don't matter in the grand scheme, the more people think that way, the less vaccinated the populace become and the more outbreaks will occur. Look at measles in BC last year.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/b-c-measles-outbreak-reveals-vulnerability-of-unvaccinated-children-1.2585457

Anyway, I'm just going to go ahead and listen to medical consensus. You're free to endanger yourself and your children, we don't live in Soviet Russia after all. I do hope unvaccinated kids are not allowed to attend public schools though.

Who is this "Jenny" that I share her concerns? On second thought, don't worry about it. Let's just discuss the issue.

You are helping to prove my point. Over 200 cases of measles in BC last year (a significant jump over previous years, by the way), out of population of over 4.5M, or, only 0.007% of the population. Yet better than 1% of children in the US are autistic (the few articles I checked assumed US and Canada at about the same levels, but with no better spcifics). Now, I will in no way argue that all of those autism cases are linked to measles vaccines, or vaccines in general. But, there are numerous articles showing a link between the vaccine and autism. You lay your bets and take your chances. If you are more concerned about the risk of measles than the issues linked with the vaccine, so be it.

Do you happen to know of the long term effects of the outbreak? Were there any deaths? I couldn't find anything in the article, and I don't get as much BC news as I used to. This is important information. In the US, there has been one death in the last dozen or so years due to measles. One. Out of 300 million.

As an alternative to funding vaccination, I would much rather see government money spent on protecting their citizens from immigrants and tourists by enforcing some sort of health inspection before people enter the country. Increases safety for everyone, and provides numerous skilled jobs that can save lives. If this kind of thing existed, it may have even prevented the outbreak of measles you referenced.

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Who is this "Jenny" that I share her concerns? On second thought, don't worry about it. Let's just discuss the issue.

You are helping to prove my point. Over 200 cases of measles in BC last year (a significant jump over previous years, by the way), out of population of over 4.5M, or, only 0.007% of the population. Yet better than 1% of children in the US are autistic (the few articles I checked assumed US and Canada at about the same levels, but with no better spcifics). Now, I will in no way argue that all of those autism cases are linked to measles vaccines, or vaccines in general. But, there are numerous articles showing a link between the vaccine and autism. You lay your bets and take your chances. If you are more concerned about the risk of measles than the issues linked with the vaccine, so be it.

Do you happen to know of the long term effects of the outbreak? Were there any deaths? I couldn't find anything in the article, and I don't get as much BC news as I used to. This is important information. In the US, there has been one death in the last dozen or so years due to measles. One. Out of 300 million.

As an alternative to funding vaccination, I would much rather see government money spent on protecting their citizens from immigrants and tourists by enforcing some sort of health inspection before people enter the country. Increases safety for everyone, and provides numerous skilled jobs that can save lives. If this kind of thing existed, it may have even prevented the outbreak of measles you referenced.

Herd immunity only works if a high percentage of people are vaccinated. We've seen resurgence of once eradicated or severely controlled pathogens because so many decided not to vaccinate -- herd immunity easily breaks down in those communities. At that point, all of those who chose not to vaccinate are a danger to the rest of people who did, or those who have specific health reasons why they cannot (elderly, extremely young, immunocompromised, etc.). Exposing people to such diseases because of one's own conscious choice not to vaccinate, to me, is pretty much criminal. Of course, I talk specifically about deadly pathogens that vaccines like MMR covers, and not necessarily the yearly influenza vaccine.

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Who is this "Jenny" that I share her concerns? On second thought, don't worry about it. Let's just discuss the issue.

You are helping to prove my point. Over 200 cases of measles in BC last year (a significant jump over previous years, by the way), out of population of over 4.5M, or, only 0.007% of the population. Yet better than 1% of children in the US are autistic (the few articles I checked assumed US and Canada at about the same levels, but with no better spcifics). Now, I will in no way argue that all of those autism cases are linked to measles vaccines, or vaccines in general. But, there are numerous articles showing a link between the vaccine and autism. You lay your bets and take your chances. If you are more concerned about the risk of measles than the issues linked with the vaccine, so be it.

Do you happen to know of the long term effects of the outbreak? Were there any deaths? I couldn't find anything in the article, and I don't get as much BC news as I used to. This is important information. In the US, there has been one death in the last dozen or so years due to measles. One. Out of 300 million.

As an alternative to funding vaccination, I would much rather see government money spent on protecting their citizens from immigrants and tourists by enforcing some sort of health inspection before people enter the country. Increases safety for everyone, and provides numerous skilled jobs that can save lives. If this kind of thing existed, it may have even prevented the outbreak of measles you referenced.

Fraudulent articles either based on outright fudging of the data, or "pseudoscience". Only link between these vaccinations and autism is the age at what autism sometimes presents itself in adolescents, and when vaccinations are given.

If everyone thought and acted like you and did not get vaccinated, these diseases you speak of that are nearly non-existent would suddenly become a very real danger to a large number of people...go talk to some people who've contracted polio and ask them if they would have preferred to have taken a vaccination that could have shielded them from it at the risk of some mystery bs made up nonsense that people like you buy and dish out to the unfortunate willing to listen to your psycho babble, or remain at risk of contracting polio.

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Yay for ebola vaccine.

As for the vaccine debate, my 2 cents.

I think the autism thing was from thimerisol which has been removed from most vaccines since the 90's I believe. It can have adverse affects in some people. Anyways my only issue is when I hear about new borns getting like 20+ injections shortly after falling out of the womb. To me that seems a little overboard, like let the kids body take in a few breaths before you pump their bloodstream with chemicals.

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Who is this "Jenny" that I share her concerns? On second thought, don't worry about it. Let's just discuss the issue.

You are helping to prove my point. Over 200 cases of measles in BC last year (a significant jump over previous years, by the way), out of population of over 4.5M, or, only 0.007% of the population. Yet better than 1% of children in the US are autistic (the few articles I checked assumed US and Canada at about the same levels, but with no better spcifics). Now, I will in no way argue that all of those autism cases are linked to measles vaccines, or vaccines in general. But, there are numerous articles showing a link between the vaccine and autism. You lay your bets and take your chances. If you are more concerned about the risk of measles than the issues linked with the vaccine, so be it.

Do you happen to know of the long term effects of the outbreak? Were there any deaths? I couldn't find anything in the article, and I don't get as much BC news as I used to. This is important information. In the US, there has been one death in the last dozen or so years due to measles. One. Out of 300 million.

As an alternative to funding vaccination, I would much rather see government money spent on protecting their citizens from immigrants and tourists by enforcing some sort of health inspection before people enter the country. Increases safety for everyone, and provides numerous skilled jobs that can save lives. If this kind of thing existed, it may have even prevented the outbreak of measles you referenced.

If you didn't want to talk about Jenny, why did you comment on it? Oi vey. You didn't even know who I was referring to and you got upset. I can't believe you got so bent out of shape for being called a girly name. Jenny McCarthy dude. Like, hello?

image.jpg

Yeah. I don't know her claim to fame either.

And you missed the point of posting that article. It was to show how things once thought beaten can come right back if people stop vaccinating. Good math comparing a highly localized outbreak to national autism numbers. Can you tell me how many apples fit inside a lobster after?

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Yay for ebola vaccine.

As for the vaccine debate, my 2 cents.

I think the autism thing was from thimerisol which has been removed from most vaccines since the 90's I believe. It can have adverse affects in some people. Anyways my only issue is when I hear about new borns getting like 20+ injections shortly after falling out of the womb. To me that seems a little overboard, like let the kids body take in a few breaths before you pump their bloodstream with chemicals.

Air is chemicals. By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.

:ph34r:

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But, but, but... do they know how these vaccines will test out? Notice that children, adolescents and pregnant women weren't given the vaccine, since they didn't know the effects yet.

Vaccines are fine when there is an issue. If I was living in West Africa and there was an outbreak, I'd sign up for the stuff. But giving vaccines to everybody for diseases that are now rare (fortunately) here is wasteful, and potentially harmful. I would rather take my chances getting polio than the potential for autism, liver damage, etc. that vaccines can cause.

Good job on those that made this vaccine happen... Ebola is scary stuff. But don't sign me up for my shot just yet. If you want to, that's up to you.

Do you know why these diseases are so rare?

It's because of vaccines (and a combination of better health care and nutrition). You still want the benefits of vaccines (not getting sick) without doing your part to protect yourself and others (actually getting the vaccines). This is either selfish or a decision based on misinformation.

You keep talking about low disease rates, those low disease rates are actually evidence for the effectiveness of vaccines. If it weren't for vaccines, these diseases would be much more prevalent.

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