Ebola is now a treatable disease

I don't want to freak anyone out, but I heard some legitimately great news the other day: Ebola is now a treatable disease.

It seems that two of four experimental drugs designed to tackle the disease have proven highly effective during field testing. Up until now, 70% infected of those infected with the Ebola virus have died. With the new drugs in play, 90% of those treated have been completely cured of the disease.

From Nature.com:

One of the drugs, REGN-EB3, is a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies against Ebola made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals of Tarrytown, New York. The second, mAB114, is derived from a single antibody recovered from the blood of a person who survived Ebola in the DRC in 1995 , and was developed by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Both drugs outperformed two other experimental treatments in the unprecedented multi-drug clinical trial in the DRC, the World Health Organization, INRB and NIAID said in a joint statement on 12 August. Preliminary data from the first 499 people enrolled in the study show that 29% of people given REGN-EB3 died, compared with 34% of those who received mAb114.

In order for these treatments to work, its important that a patient receive REGN-EB3 or mAB114 shortly after they were initially infected with Ebola. This could present a problem, however, given that an individual can have the virus coursing through their veins for days without showing any symptoms. Still, it's a wonderful start.

Now the trick is to figure out through-you guessed it-more trials, which of the these two drugs are the most effective in destroying the Ebola virus.

Holy shit.

Image via CDC Global