HIV drug Epivir succeeds against Ebola

Who would have thought. A doctor in Africa came up with a random desperate idea to try the HIV drug Lamivudine/Epivir. Surprisingly the first results are very positive (pun intended).

A doctor in rural Liberia inundated with Ebola patients says he's had good results with a treatment he tried out of sheer desperation: an HIV drug. 

Dr. Gobee Logan has given the drug, lamivudine, to 15 Ebola patients, and all but two survived. That's a 7% mortality rate. 

Across West Africa, the virus has killed 70% of its victims. 

Outside Logan's Ebola center in Tubmanburg, four of his recovering patients walk the grounds, always staying inside the fence that separates the Ebola patients from everyone else. 

"My stomach was hurting; I was feeling weak; I was vomiting," Elizabeth Kundu, 23, says of her bout with the virus. 

"They gave me medicine, and I'm feeling fine. We take it, and we can eat -- we're feeling fine in our bodies." 

Kundu and the other 12 patients who took the lamivudine and survived, received the drug in the first five days or so of their illness. The two patients who died received it between days five and eight. 

"I'm sure that when [patients] present early, this medicine can help," Logan said. "I've proven it right in my center." more