Statins used to treat Ebola; results published

PROVIDENCE – Dr. Steven Opal, professor of medicine in the Warren Alpert Medical School and a physician at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, and a partner, Dr. David Fedson, experimented during the Ebola epidemic of 2014 with treating patients with the same drugs used to hold down cholesterol levels: statins.

While running a full-scale study during the crisis was not possible, the two gained permission from the Sierra Leone government and treated roughly 100 patients in two hospitals with a 10-day course of the generic drugs atorvastatin and irbesartan.

Of the 100 patients, all but two reportedly survived, and the limited-sampling-base experiment was just published in the journal mBio, with the paper indicating that survival of Ebola patients treated with statins was “greatly improved.” Opal and Fedson hope one day to do a full clinical trial.

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