Coronavirus treatments: what drugs might work against COVID-19?

Medical Xpress ^ | 04/16/2020 | by Connor Bamford

[SeekAndFind]

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the world, killing thousands and bringing economies to their knees, doctors, scientists and governments are on the lookout for safe and effective treatments to help those who are sick. And yet a large issue with COVID-19 is that there is, as yet, no cure.

Though there are treatments that can alleviate the symptoms—such as difficulty breathing—they do not address the underlying cause: the virus. The idea is that treating the symptoms will help prolong a patient's life and buy time for their own immune systems to kick in and remove the infection.

While research into related coronaviruses over the last few decades has brought some promising looking drugs, only large clinical trials on patients with COVID-19 will be able to reveal precisely whether these interventions are safe and effective. Unfortunately, these kinds of large trials take time to carry out, but they are ongoing.

The World Heath Organization (WHO) announced it has helped to launch four "mega trials" against COVID-19 and there are countless more smaller ones coordinated in countries worldwide.

The WHO-backed trials are focusing on drugs that are thought to directly block SARS-CoV-2—the virus strain that causes coronavirus COVID-19—from replicating inside our lungs. Below are some of the main drugs these trials are looking at.

Remdesivir

This is an intravenous antiviral drug that was developed to block infection with related coronaviruses and even Ebola, and is one of the drugs the WHO is helping to investigate.

Remdisivir has already been shown to work against SARS-CoV-2 in cells in a dish in a lab as well as in mice infected with the virus. Remdesivir specifically targets key viral proteins involved in making new copies of the virus and prevents them from working.

Remdesivir has already been used in some COVID-19 patients in the US and appears safe, but large trials are needed to really know if this is the case.

Lopinavir/ritonavir

This is a drug combination used against viruses like HIV. It works in a similar way to remdesivir by blocking key viral proteins called "proteases".

Lopinavir/ritonavir has also been shown to be effective against SARS-CoV-2 in lab cells as well as in mice and is being tested alongside an antiviral drug called interferon beta. This is currently used to treat Multiple sclerosis and can enhance the natural defences of the body's cells against COVID-19.

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine

Both of these drugs are currently used to treat malaria and the autoimmune disease lupus. Chloroquine has been tested against lots of different infections because in the lab it can block viruses—including SARS-CoV-2—from getting inside cells placed in a dish and so prevent infection.

Outside the lab, chloroquine has not been demonstrated to have a profound effect at preventing disease and there is limited evidence so far that it can work for COVID-19, despite receiving a lot of hype from President Donald Trump. But again, large trials are needed and the WHO is supporting these.

Caution should be observed with chloroquine as it can have significant side effects in certain people and may even block the immune response—the desired result in lupus treatment.

Two other options

The above potential treatments all work by blocking some key element of the virus infection machinery using small molecules. Two other kinds of treatments are also being explored in trials that work in a different way.

The first is passive immunisation which is the transfer—or transfusion—of potential protective antibodies from someone who has been infected and recovered from COVID-19 to someone who is at high-risk or is suffering from a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

This so-called "convalescent sera" (which is a purified blood product from someone who has recovered from COVID-19) can block SARS-CoV-2 in cells in a dish in the lab and has the potential to help develop treatments. Passive immunisation for COVID-19 is being tested in trials across the world and so far results seem to suggest it is safe to use.

Another kind of possible treatment works by blocking parts of our own immune system that are likely overreacting to SARS-CoV-2 infection and contributing to the damage in our lungs.

In the limited studies that have been conducted on COVID-19, it seems that in some severe cases our immune response goes into overdrive without being able to clear the infection and this can increase the severity of the disease. When this happens, high levels of inflammation is found in the lungs.

Potential treatments that look at blocking the immune components linked to this severity have begun. That said, extreme caution must be taken when manipulating the immune response during an infection as in the absence of other therapies we rely on our immune response to limit the virus replicating.

So although specific treatments for COVID-19 are not yet available, drugs are being tested and clinical trials and starting to yield results. This, combined with the further knowledge that scientists are gaining about SARS-CoV-2 will help massively until a vaccine becomes available.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

A good 12+ year old Single Malt Scotch.

[Right Wing Assault]

They're running trials. Come back in 6 months if you are still alive.

[RedStateRocker]

I do wish people on here weren’t so emotionally invested in the efficacy of chloroquine.

[DCBryan1]

Dr Malik study says 500mg Vit C, 50mg Zinc, 250-400mg Quercetin, and 2000IU Vit D , and 1 mg Melatonin as prophylactic along with 8+ hours of sleep a night, preferably 9+.

a href=https://www.evms.edu/covid-19/medical_information_resources/?fbclid=IwAR0SO7_tEvFFo-EYiCwIqIr0WHOE6NY3NQxVgGLZefqBOu6oihsDf3spvmQ>SOURCE. Click below the COVID Care Protocol on the download for protocol and summary in link.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: I do wish people on here weren’t so emotionally invested in the efficacy of chloroquine.

Yes, just as I wish people would not be so emotionally invested in the INEFFICACY of choldorquine.

[BwanaNdege]

“Outside the lab, chloroquine has not been demonstrated to have a profound effect at preventing disease and there is limited evidence so far that it can work for COVID-19,”

YOU LYING SACK OF PREVIOUSLY DIGESTED FOOD!

[MHGinTN]

Disinformation and propaganda article. ANYTHING defending the corrupt WHO should be discarded and given lowest credulity. HCQ has shown in use to date a remarkable ability to reduce viral replication, most likely by ferrying ZINC into infected cells where the ZINC destroys the viral replication takeover of the cells replicating ribosomes. Reducing viral load gives the body’s immune system time to mount a devastating assault on the invading pathogen. The HCQ ALSO reduces inflammatory response in the airways resisting the cytokine storm potential.

[RedStateRocker]

Yep. Folks on both sides are making it more about President Trump than scientific research. If a drug or a procedure works or doesn’t, it matters not at all who hypes or hates it.

[FreedomPoster]

There was a Brit teacher trapped in Wuhan for the worst of it there who says he got through it on hot whiskey-honey toddy’s.

[trebb]

And I wish that more folks would recognize that the “anecdotal” evidence of certain windows of efficacy have piled up enough evidence to make it worthwhile as other treatments are developed and tested....there’s more medical evidence about it being useful than anything else under test at this time...unless all them doctors/nurses and other on front lines are just telling tales...as they dose themselves and their staffs with it as a potential palliative.

[meyer]

I like how suddenly, the media is touting the value of WHO.

[null and void]

I can't help but notice how they put hydroxychoroquine an chloroquine in the same paragraph, only report on the bad side effects of chloroquine, then attempt to tar both hydroxychloroquine (which doesn't have those side effects) and Trump (who never advocated chloroquine).

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

The false positive rate was 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's or one old fart’s life, it's worth it.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

As CSNY says, if you’re not with the one you love, love the one you’re with.

[old curmudgeon]

Sounds like this was written by Bill Gates or Soros.

Probably a disciple of one or the other...or both.

Maybe knowingly or more likely unwittingly.

Difficult to tell since both have so many layers of organizations between themselves and the articles that appear on the internet that tracing back to them is tedious at best.

J just ask yourself where you have heard this before......Gates and big pharma.

And all of this in spite of the results posted by successful doctors and successfully treated survivors.

[little jeremiah]

Demsheviks want more and more people to die, they’re not hiding this any more.

[Silentgypsy]

I like the way you distill a thing down to its essence.

[null and void]

Did you see this post:

Ahhh, but how many Indians and Bangladeshis are suffering side effects from taking these anti-malarial pills?

Chloroquine has some bad side effects.

HYDROXYchloroquine, not so much...

People who want the world depopulated and the Orange Man Bad out deliberately conflate the two drugs.

As do their unwitting dupes.

[RedStateRocker]

I’d take it, personally. but anyone thinking it’s some miracle panacea who don’t have an appropriate Ph.D. shouldn’t really be listened to, at least not as to efficacy.

It’s the people who regard apply emotion and partisan reasoning (’our side said it, so anyone who disagrees with it is evil) who make me sick. It might work, it might not, it’s certainly worth a try and I’ve pretty much always thought the only job of the FDA was to verify that food or drugs were what was claimed, I see nothing in my copy of the constitution that gives any governmental entity any say in what goes in my body. But some people get really wound up at every bit of scientific skepticism, which is stupid.

From the start of this mess I’ve said the same thing- anyone without a doctorate in a pertinent medical or scientific discipline should just STFU except for the President and Congress who also have to balance other factors like the economy and international relations. I’m just prejudiced, my FIL was a doctor, my MIL a nurse; people without 8-10 years of college study should be ridiculed when they pontificate, be they from left or right.

[Hiddigeigei]

2005 in vitro study:
Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread
Martin J Vincent, et al. Virology Journal 2, Article number: 69 (2005)
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-2-69

French study (24 patients): Now over a thousand patients:
Pr Didier Raoult, French professor, world expert in contagious diseases (coronavirus vs chloroquine)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL4mMJiW4RI

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko (699 patients treated with Hydocloroquine, Azithomysin and zinc sulfate)
EXCELLENT NEWS: Hydroxychloroquine Treatment Effective on 699 Patients
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TJdjhd_XG8

Dr. Stephen Smith, Smith Center for Infectious Diseases in New Jersey (“Hydroxychloroquine is a game changer and the beginning of the end coronavirus pandemic,...“We’ve had, I mentioned 20 intubations, most all of them occurred in the first two days (of treatment),” Smith continued. “More importantly, no person who has received five days or more of the hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin combination has been intubated.”)
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6146455701001#sp=show-clips

Another French Study (36 patents, 20 given hydroxychloroquine)
International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents (Mar. 20, 2020) in press (available on line)
“Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19: results of an open-label non-randomized clinical trial by Philippe” by Gautret et al. (20 patients given Hydroxychlororquine (6 azithromycin also), 16 patients not given the medicine.)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300996
(2004 Rega Institute for Medical Research, University of Leuven (Belgium) Leuven, Belgium):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X0401839X