(Updates with Sacra’s condition in the fifth paragraph.)
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- A third U.S. missionary worker who was infected with Ebola in Liberia and flown to the U.S. for medical care was treated with blood transfusions from another American who recovered from the virus last month.
Rick Sacra, a 51-year-old physician, was admitted to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha on Sept. 5. A day later, he got the first of two blood plasma transfusions from Kent Brantly, the 33-year-old missionary doctor released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta last month after being evacuated from Africa and successfully treated for the deadly disease.
Sacra was infected while delivering babies in Monrovia, Liberia, on behalf of the Christian missionary group SIM USA. He also has been receiving an experimental drug every night for the last several days, said Angela Hewlett, associate medical director of the hospital’s biocontainment unit. Doctors hope the virus-fighting antibodies in Brantly’s blood help Sacra.
“We’re hoping it jump starts his immunity,” Phil Smith, medical director of the biocontainment unit, said today during a conference call with reporters. “To survive you have to build up enough antibodies to neutralize the virus. We’re hoping to buy him some time, in other words to give him antibodies to help his immune system battle the Ebola virus and let him get ahead of the curve.”
Sacra is stronger and getting back to his normal self, Hewlett said. He’s in good condition and a relapse is less likely, though it’s impossible to know for sure, she said.
‘Remarkable’ Progress
“We’re on new ground here,” she said. “There is no way to tell, but I can tell you his progress has been remarkable.”
The World Health Organization is encouraging the use of blood taken from Ebola survivors to treat current patients and said last week it should be a priority. The agency is helping establish a system that can be used to safely draw blood from those who have recovered from the disease, prepare it and re- inject it into patients. Doctors at Emory and Nebraska are also working on lists of survivors by blood type who could donate.
The Ebola outbreak is the largest in history, sickening 4,269 people as of Sept. 6 and killing at least 2,296 in four West African countries, according to the World Health Organization. There are no approved drugs to treat the condition. Patients are given intravenous fluids, blood transfusions and antibiotics to bolster their immune systems and help fight off other infections.
Antibody Effort
The blood of survivors has natural antibodies against Ebola. Antibodies are produced by white blood cells and bind to foreign invaders like viruses or bacteria, either neutralizing them or flagging them for destruction by other parts of the immune system. About 47 percent of people infected during the current outbreak have survived, providing a potential pool of donors.
The first two U.S. aid workers infected with Ebola, Brantly and Nancy Writebol, were taken to Atlanta’s Emory for treatment in August. They both received Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.’s experimental drug ZMapp and recovered from the virus. Doctors say they can’t definitively credit the drug with the patients’ survival, as some people recover from the infection and Brantly and Writebol also received supportive care.
The Nebraska doctors have been asked by several people not to disclose which experimental drug is being given each day to Sacra, Smith said. There isn’t enough information available on its benefits, there is a very small supply and the doctors don’t want to encourage the belief that it may be a cure-all, he said.
“We don’t know if this is having an effect at all,” Smith said. “We just administered everything we had access to, honestly.”
Experimental Drugs
The U.S. National Institute of Health is working on an Ebola vaccine and other treatments are in development by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp., Fujifilm Holdings Corp., BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Sarepta Therapeutics Inc.
Sacra now is able to walk around his room, read magazines and eat a small amount of food, Hewlett said.
He rode on a recumbent exercise bicycle yesterday for 10 minutes, said his wife, Debbie Sacra. That’s a far cry from the 15 miles to 35 miles he used to do a few times a week back in July, she said. Getting back his physical strength will take a while, though mentally he is already much more like his usual self, she said.
Sacra has been taking detailed notes on his symptoms as the disease took hold and he hopes the information he and his doctors are able to provide will help patients in Africa, Debbie Sacra said. She also said he would likely want to return to the area once he has fully recovered.
Helping Africa
“We’d like to think that we can isolate ourselves from a situation like the one in Liberia,” she said of Americans. “But every day and ever week that we don’t do what we can to stop Ebola in West Africa, we are risking the possibility that it will not stay in West Africa.”
A fourth patient was taken to Emory University Hospital this week and is being treated in the isolation unit there. Authorities haven’t released any details on the patient. The U.S. State Department plans to evacuate any U.S. workers in Africa who become infected, according to an agency document.
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