I’ve been wondering, do the anti-viral drugs that were developed for treating HIV have any effect on other viruses? What would happen if, as soon as a person was diagnosed with ebola, they were started on an anti-viral cocktail along with immune boosters and blood platelets?
I’m not a doctor, but I haven’t find any reason yet why this wouldn’t help.
They would only affect other viruses that have the same overall characteristics. I think that HIV and Ebola are different enough that the same antivirals would not work on both viruses.
The HIV drugs may or may not help, they are fairly specific. The reason the platelets drop and the patients bleed is actually because they clot everywhere. The virus causes clotting in all the smallish vessels, using up all the clotting factors and platelets, so the patients have nothing left to clot with and bleed everywhere
The medical name is DIC, or disseminated intravascular coagulation. Giving platelets rarely helps as they are just used up as fast as the patients own platelets. The immune system works just fine in these folks, unlike in HIV
The only treatment I am aware of is supportive care - fluids, pain relief etc, and the mortality rate is very high. Lots of work to be done on a very nasty disease we have now voluntarily invited on our soil. Lets hope the CDC has learned from some recent horrific breaches, and things go well, but I’m not very optomistic.