Mar 5, 2015 3 min read

The moment he felt a needle jab into his thumb in September on an Ebola ward in Sierra Leone, Dr. Lewis Rubinson knew he was at risk of contracting the deadly disease. What could he do but wait to see if he got sick, and hope that treatment would pull him through?

Rubinson, an intensive-care specialist and associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, chose another option, described in an article and editorial published Thursday in The Journal of the American Medical Association. He was quickly given a shot of an experimental vaccine, a type that had been used in only one other person. The hope was that if he had been exposed to Ebola, the vaccine would stimulate his immune system to fight off the virus.

As it turns out, it is not clear whether the vaccine could have protected him against Ebola, because blood tests indicate he was almost certainly never infected. It is clear, though, that the vaccine stirred up his immune system: He had fever, chills, nausea, muscle pains and a headache. But the symptoms ebbed after a few days, and when it was all over blood tests suggested that he was probably immune to Ebola.

Although it is impossible to draw broad conclusions from a single case, doctors said the information was nonetheless useful. There is hardly any other data on how the vaccine affects people, and knowing how Rubinson fared may help other health workers potentially exposed to Ebola decide whether to be vaccinated.

“In all likelihood, unfortunately, there will continue to be health care workers and others who have what are considered to be significant exposures to this potentially lethal virus,” said Dr. Mark J. Mulligan, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, and the senior author of the journal article.

The current outbreak has killed hundreds of doctors and nurses, mostly Africans. Ideally, Mulligan said, health workers would be vaccinated before they begin caring for Ebola patients. But until vaccines are approved and made widely available, he said, emergency treatment as in Rubinson’s case will be the best that doctors can offer to people who may have been exposed on the wards.

The vaccine was created by scientists from Canada and the United States about a decade ago, but its progress was stalled until recently, largely because drug companies have been reluctant to spend the huge sums needed to develop products useful mostly to poor countries.