Italian NGO Used Toxic Untested Ebola Drug on Patients in Sierra Leone

'Emergency', an Italian NGO, has been using an untested drug to treat Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. British doctors who worked at the center warned of the toxic side effects of the treatment.

MOSCOW, December 23 (Sputnik), Ekaterina Blinova — British doctors have withdrawn from an Italian NGO 'Emergency' treatment center in Sierra Leona, which has been experimenting with an untested drug on Ebola patients.

"Ebola patients at a treatment centre in Sierra Leone have been given a heart drug that is untested against the virus in animals and humans, a move that has been deemed reckless by one senior scientist and has prompted UK medical staff at the centre to leave," the Guardian reported.

The NGO refers to a study carried out by German scientists, which indicated that amiodarone, the drug licensed as a treatment to regulate the heartbeat, could prevent the Ebola virus from entering human body cells.

"We discovered that amiodarone, a multi-ion channel inhibitor and adrenoceptor antagonist, is a potent inhibitor of filovirus [Ebola virus] cell entry at concentrations that are routinely reached in human serum during anti-arrhythmic therapy," the researchers stated in August, 2014.

However, the drug has not been tested on animals or humans in order to find out whether amiodarone has any negative effects on Ebola victims, suffering from liver, kidney and breathing problems.

Jeremy Farrar, a member of the World Health Organization scientific advisory committee and the director of the Wellcome Trust, funding drug trials in West Africa, elaborated that the drug "was considered for the WHO priority list and it was decided it was not on the priority list."

"It doesn't mean to say it is absolutely terrible, but you shouldn't really be using it unless you have got very careful monitoring of the heart. What we see sometimes in the lab does not translate into having an antiviral effect in humans," he said as quoted by the Guardian.

A team of British medics working at Emergency center in Sierra Leone reported that "the toxic side effects of amiodarone," given to terminally ill Ebola patients, "could in fact be contributing to increased morbidity" within the center.

Rossella Miccio, Emergency's coordinator in the West African state, dismissed the accusations, claiming that the NGO "was using [amiodarone] in an emergency and compassionate way."

However, the Department for International Development (Dfid), warned by the British doctors, demanded that Emergency suspend using of the drug.
"As soon as we became aware, we asked Emergency to stop administering it and withdrew NHS volunteers. Emergency complied with this immediately and we are working closely with them to ensure all clinical activity at Goderich adheres to national standards," the Dfid's spokesperson stated.

The NGO is currently planning to conduct a formal trial of amiodarone.

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