Doctors Cure Ebola Patient with Heart Drugs

       
Doctors in Germany said on Wednesday a patient infected with Ebola had recovered after they had treated him with an experimental drug initially designed to treat vascular problems and help heart attack patients.
Doctors at the Frankfurt University Hospital said the patient, who was medically evacuated to Frankfurt after working with Ebola victims in Sierra Leone, recovered after receiving the drug called FX06, developed by scientists at the Vienna General Hospital in Austria.
The patient, whose immune system had been weakened by the virus, was still in hospital, the medics told reporters at a news conference, and would spend more time in Frankfurt until he regained his strength.
While the doctors said their success with this patient suggested FX06 may be a potential treatment for Ebola, the Austrian scientists who developed it said in a statement on their website that another Ebola patient treated in Leipzig with the same drug had died "due to massive overall bleeding"
Despite this, they added, "there is good reason to believe that the drug has a beneficial effect as supportive treatment in Ebola patients."
Rather than attacking the virus, the Frankfurt hospital said the treatment focused on mitigating the damage to organs caused by the pathogen.
According to its developers, FX06 is an experimental drug designed to stop the leakage of plasma fluid from blood vessels, which is what happened to the Frankfurt patient. The drug is being tested on humans to treat some damage caused by heart attacks.
source: news24