NPR | "An old vaccine may provide some hope for stopping the spread of Ebola"
NPR (KCRW-FM) interviewed Dr. Anne Rimoin, associate dean of global health and professor in the Department of Epidemiology, about her Ebola research.
NPR (KCRW-FM) interviewed Dr. Anne Rimoin, associate dean of global health and professor in the Department of Epidemiology, about her research into Ebola vaccines, including newly-published work that suggests an existing vaccine could benefit patients in the current outbreak, the worst in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s history.
"Ebola is still out of control in central Africa, on track to be the worst outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s history. There’s no cure, but there is a vaccine. It’s for a different strain of Ebola, but new research shows it may work on this strain, too. UCLA epidemiologist Anne Rimoin co-authored the study published in The Lancet.
"This virus was able to spread, out of control, and with Ebola, you always need to get in front of it," said Rimoin, the Gordon-Levin Endowed Chair in Infectious Diseases and Public Health and director of the Center for Global Health Security at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. "The question is then, if you vaccinate people with one Ebola virus, does the immune response recognize the other one at all? ... and what we have found is that, in people who received the licensed Ebola vaccine, they had immune responses that also recognized the (second) virus."
