News

Stepping up to the challenge: studying drug dosage during an Ebola outbreak

 

A specialist technique used to study drugs has been completed for the first time during an outbreak of Ebola virus disease.

The study published in eBiomedicine was a collaboration of researchers from Sierra Leone and the University’s of Glasgow, Oxford, Cambridge and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. It used pharmacokinetics – the measurement of the change in drug concentration in a person over time – to study an experimental drug called TKM-130803 for the treatment of Ebola virus disease during the 2015 outbreak in Sierra Leone.

Read the full article on the eBiomedicine site.

 

Patients Recruited to Lassa Fever Study in Owo, Nigeria

 

After training the local team, a new observational study into Lassa fever has opened in Owo Federal Medical centre, and patients are already being recruited. The study hopes to improve the case management of Lassa fever by investigating the role of cardiovascular dysfunction, and identifying the most appropriate dose of ribavirin to use as treatment. Work on the study is supported by UK-PHRST, funded by UK aid from the Department of Health and Social Care.

 

Over 3000 patients for MERMAIDS-ARI, MERMAIDS-ARBO and PED-MERMAIDS!


Coordinated by the European-funded PREPARE network and supported by ERGO, MERMAIDS (The Multi-centre EuRopean study of MAjor Infectious Disease Syndromes) has now closed recruitment for three of its studies on acute respiratory infection, arboviral compatible febrile illness, and Sepsis-like syndrome in infants and ARI in children. 1524 patients were recruited for the ARI study, over 900 for the ARBO study and 705 for the pediatric study . A huge congratulations to all of the sites across Europe who worked with ERGO and PREPARE teams to achieve this fantastic result, particularly in MERMAIDS-ARI which represents the largest ever study of the pathogenesis of ARI.  All sites promise exciting insights in the coming months and years.

Ribavirin Healthy Volunteers Study Open

 

Our Ribavirin Healthy Volunteers Study is now open for recruitment! The aim of the study is to validate a method of measuring a drug called ribacirin in the blood. Ribavirin is normally used to treat Hepatitis C and other diseases such as Lassa fever, which is a viral infection occuring in West Africa.

Volunteers will be compensated for their time. For more information, see https://ergo.tghn.org/volunteer/ribavirin-volunteer/

Articles

Pharmacokinetics of TKM-130803 in Sierra Leonean patients with Ebola virus disease: plasma concentrations exceed target levels, with drug accumulation in the most severe patients

by Janet T. Scott, Raman Sharma, Luke W. Meredith, Jake Dunning, Catrin E. Moore, Foday Sahr, Steve Ward, Ian Goodfellow, Peter Horby, RAPIDE-TKM Trial Team

EBioMedicine - January 2020 TKM-130803 is a specific anti-EBOV therapeutic comprised of two small interfering RNAs (siRNA) siLpol-2 and siVP35-2. The pharmacokinetics (PK) of these siRNAs was defined in Ebola virus ...

A rapid research needs appraisal methodology to identify evidence gaps to inform clinical research priorities in response to outbreaks—results from the Lassa fever pilot

by Louise Sigfrid, Alex Salam and Peter Horby

  BMC Medicine 2019 17:107 Louise Sigfrid, Catrin Moore, Alex P. Salam, Nicola Maayan, Candyce Hamel, Chantelle Garritty, Vittoria Lutje, Brian Buckley, Karla Soares-Weiser, Rachel Marshall, Mike Clarke and Peter Horby Infectious disease epidemics are a constant threat, and while we ...