The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reportedly approved the testing of an Aethlon Medical bio-filtration device on Ebola patients.
The device, dubbed Aethlon's Hemopurifier, has already been used to illicit a full recovery in a critically ill German patient, Reuters reported.
The device works to combat pandemics by filtering both viruses and toxins from the blood. It is currently being tested in India to see if it can efficiently lower viral loads when used in combination with standard Hepatitis C treatments.
In the new study patients will be treated with the device for between six and eight hours until Ebola virus loads drop below 1,000 copies per milliliter in the samples. The FDA will allow the device to be tested on up to 20 patients suffering from Ebola in the U.S.
In the German study conducted at Frankfurt University Hospital, medical researchers were able to reduce a patient's viral load from 400,000 copies per milliliter to 1,000 copies per milliliter in a span of only six and a half hours using Aethlon's Hemopurifier.
The recent Ebola outbreak is the largest in history and has claimed at least 7,905 lives so far. Symptoms of the deadly disease include "Fever; Severe headache; Muscle pain; Weakness; Fatigue; Diarrhea; Vomiting; Abdominal (stomach) pain; [and] Unexplained hemorrhage (bleeding or bruising)," the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported.
Ebola is spread through contact with biological fluids including (but not limited to) "urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, and semen," the CDC reported. Contact with infected syringes or carries such as fruit bats or primates can also lead to the spread of the disease.
"The Aethlon Medical mission is to create innovative medical devices that address unmet medical needs in cancer, infectious disease, and other life-threatening conditions," the company stated on its website.
