For a few decades now, doctors treating outbreaks have toyed with the idea of injecting blood from those who survived the virus into patients showing symptoms. But the theory hasn’t been well-tested.
As Newsweek reported, at the tail end of a 1995 outbreak in Zaire, medical professionals who had survived an infection earlier donated their blood to eight health workers showing Ebola symptoms, and seven of eight people survived. A 14-year-old survivor recently donated his blood to the American Dr. Kent Brantly, who was working in Liberia but started showing symptoms.
The transfusion treatment was also used when treating other infectious diseases around the world, but it has been difficult to test on Ebola specifically, which is unpredictable and infects relatively fewer people.
“There are so many things we don’t know about why somebody may recover and which antibodies might be effective,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to NBC.
The method has been tried a few times on monkeys and reportedly hasn’t been effective.
“The sad fact is we don’t have any proven treatment for Ebola. We don’t have any proven vaccine against Ebola,” Frieden said.
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