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New York will start trials for anti-malaria drug Tuesday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said The drug, hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria, as well as some non-infectious inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis Several people have come forward saying the drug has helped fight COVID-19 Rio Giardinieri, of Florida, said the drug 'saved his life' after he testes positive Margaret Novins, of New Jersey, also said the medication made her feel better There are currently no approved treatments or preventive vaccines for the virus Researchers are studying existing treatments and working on experimental ones, but current patients receive only supportive care...

A drug combo already used against HIV. A malaria treatment first tested during World War II. A new antiviral whose promise against Ebola fizzled last year. Could any of these drugs hold the key to saving COVID-19 patients from serious harm or death? On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a large global trial, called SOLIDARITY, to find out if any can treat infections with the new coronavirus for the dangerous respiratory disease. It’s an unprecedented effort—an all-out, coordinated push to collect robust scientific data rapidly during a pandemic. The study, which could include many thousands of patients in...

Rio Giardinieri, 52, who is vice-president of a company that manufactures cooking equipment at high-end restaurants in LA and around the world, thinks he contracted COVID-19 at a conference in New York. He had a fever for five days, horrendous back pain, headache, cough, and tiredness. He was sleeping about 15 hours a day when he’s used to getting five hours a night. He says his doctors did not want to see him so he drove to Joe DiMaggio hospital in South Florida, near his home, and nearly passed out waiting to get tested. Doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia and...

“Lost” star Daniel Dae Kim believes the anti-malarial drug touted by President Trump was the “secret weapon” in his recovery from the coronavirus. The 51-year-old actor praised hydroxychloroquine as being “critical” in the treatment that has left him now “practically back to normal” just days after confirming he had been infected. “Yes, this is the drug that the President mentioned the other day,” Kim said in an Instagram video Saturday, noting that Dr. Anthony Fauci had cautioned that supposed success stories were “only based on personal accounts.”

President Donald Trump touted a two-drug cocktail Saturday to battle the coronavirus. But the medicines together have been linked to cardiac arrhythmia and sudden death. Concerned physicians responded to Trump’s tweet crowing about what could be “one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine” with warnings about the serious side effects — and urgent pleas not to try to obtain the drugs without a medical prescription in consultation with a doctor. Hydroxychloroquine, sold under the brand name Plaquenil, and the antibiotic Azithromycin in combination have shown some early promise against COVID-19. But the drugs together have not been...

The China coronavirus and COVID-19 outbreaks, deaths and responses continue to dominate US, European and Asian news. Meanwhile, an equally or even more serious infestation is devastating East African crops and leaving tens of millions at risk of starvation and death. If COVID hits these weakened populations, amid their malaria and other systemic diseases, it would bring tragedy on massive scales. “Across Somalia, desert locusts in a swarm the size of Manhattan have destroyed a swath of farmland as big as Oklahoma,” the Wall Street Journal’s Nicholas Bariyo reports. “In Kenya, billions-strong clouds of the insects have eaten through 800...

Delingpole: Chloroquine Known as Effective Against Coronavirus Since 2005 21,461 GERARD JULIEN/AFP via Getty James Delingpole19 Mar 20208,759 4:28 The world economy is collapsing because of the terror and mounting death toll caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. But the anti-malarial drug chloroquine is effective both as a prophylactic and treatment for the virus – and the medical establishment has known about this since at least the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2005. What the hell is going on? Yesterday, I reported the existence of three studies, all claiming that chloroquine phosphate had proved effective in treating the COVID-19. This has since...

President Trump said the drug has shown 'very, very encouraging early results' Pharmaceutical company Bayer has responded to the ongoing outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus — formally known as COVID-19 — by donating millions of tablets of an anti-malarial drug that could be used to combat the disease to the United States government. Ditch the fake news ==> Click here to get news you can trust sent right to your inbox. It's free! According to a story published Thursday at MarketWatch: U.S. listed shares of Bayer AG bayry rose 3% in trading on Thursday afternoon after it said it had...

Donald Trump told reporters at his White House press conference Thursday that the FDA will soon undergo testing on a drug known as either chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to see its effectiveness in treating coronavirus. It has previously been used to treat malaria and autoimmune diseases, per CNN. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said Trump instructed them to take a closer look at the effectiveness of chloroquine on coronavirus patients since the drug has already been approved for use. “It's been around for a long time so we know if things don't go as planned it's not going to kill anybody,” Trump...

A drug developed over half a century ago to treat malaria is showing signs that it may also help cure COVID-19 — especially when combined with an antibiotic, a promising new study reveals. Hydroxychloroquine, sold under the brand name Plaquenil — and also used to treat arthritis and other ailments — was determined to be effective in killing the deadly bug in laboratory experiments, Forbes reported, citing findings published March 9 in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved hydroxychloroquine—a drug used to treat malaria, rheumatic diseases and other conditions—for COVID-19. As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the world, scientists are scrambling to identify treatments that may be effective against the disease. Hydroxychloroquine—a common derivative of chloroquine—is among those touted as most promising by some experts. "The nice part is, it's been around for a long time, so we know that if things don't go as planned its not going to kill anybody," Trump told reporters at a press conference. "When you go with a...

A drug developed over half a century ago to treat malaria is showing signs that it may also help cure COVID-19 — especially when combined with an antibiotic, a promising new study reveals. Hydroxychloroquine, sold under the brand name Plaquenil — and also used to treat arthritis and other ailments — was determined to be effective in killing the deadly bug in laboratory experiments, Forbes reported, citing findings published March 9 in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal. Now, French physician-researchers have completed a largely successful clinical trial using the drug — approved for use in the US in 1955 —...

IHU Méditerranée Infection / @IHU_Marseille / Twitter The trial was completed by Professor Didier Raoult, based at infectious diseases institute, IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseille A renowned research professor in France has reported successful results from a new treatment for Covid-19, with early tests suggesting it can stop the virus from being contagious in just six days. Professor Didier Raoult from infection hospital l'Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) Méditerranée Infection in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur), published a video explaining the trials on Monday March 16.Professor Raoult is an infectious diseases specialist and head of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, who has been tasked...

Abstract BACKGROUND: The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) first broke out in Wuhan (China) and subsequently spread worldwide. Chloroquine has been sporadically used in treating SARS-CoV-2 infection. Hydroxychloroquine shares the same mechanism of action as chloroquine, but its more tolerable safety profile makes it the preferred drug to treat malaria and autoimmune conditions. We propose that the immunomodulatory effect of hydroxychloroquine also may be useful in controlling the cytokine storm that occurs late-phase in critically ill SARS-CoV-2 infected patients. Currently, there is no evidence to support the use of hydroxychloroquine in SARS-CoV-2 infection. METHODS: The pharmacological activity of...

Drugs developed in the past to treat malaria, AIDS and other respiratory syndromes are showing promise against coronavirus. Antivirals and other medicines created for past outbreaks like malaria, AIDS, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) are being tested and showing early signs of success in treating the new coronavirus, experts say. If the progress continues, medical experts in the United States could have a new regimen from drugs that are readily available and generally cheap to treat the most seriously infected patients and provide prophylactic protection for healthcare workers. When the Chinese first reported the pneumonia cases to the World...

Chloroquine might be getting new life as an antiviral treatment for the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, China in late 2019 and has infected some 25,000 people in more than 25 countries. For decades, the drug was a front-line treatment and prophylactic for malaria. In a three-page paper published Tuesday in Cell Research, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s State Key Laboratory of Virology write that both chloroquine and the antiviral remdesivir were, individually, “highly effective” at inhibiting replication of the novel coronavirus in cell culture. Their drug screen evaluated five other drugs that were not effective. The...

A British engineer has found a way to filter unwanted cells from blood using magnets — and his tool could be used in clinical trials as soon as next year.Thanks to existing research, biochemical scientist George Frodsham knew it was possible to force magnetic nanoparticles to bind to specific cells in the body. But while other researchers did so primarily to make those cells show up in images, he wondered whether the same technique might allow doctors to remove unwanted cells from the blood.“When someone has a tumour you cut it out,” he told The Telegraph. “Blood cancer is a tumour...

An award-winning engineer has developed a new technology that could draw deadly infections such as malaria and sepsis from the body using magnets. ================================================================ George Frodsham designed the blood filtering system whilst studying how magnetic nanoparticles can bind to cells to make them detectable during imaging. He realized that if the nanoparticles can be made to magnetize cells so that they show up on scanners, it should also be possible to use them to draw cells from the blood. “In theory, you can go after almost anything” Theoretically, any bacteria, virus, or blood cancer, such as leukemia, could be bound...

FACT OF THE DAY: Malaria, which is caused by the parasitic protozoa plasmodium, is the deadliest disease of all time. No disease, including the plague or smallpox, has killed more people. It has also killed more people than all wars, famines, and natural disasters combined.

The chemical, DFDT, could have an impact combating disease-carrying mosquitoes while causing less environmental damage than the chemically similar DDT. American scientists previously looked into the insecticide in the 1940s, but it was lost in the chaos following World War II, likely due to its ties to the Nazi regime. Chemistry researchers had been examining the insecticide DDT, known for its devastating environmental effects. They made some changes to DDT’s crystal structure by swapping out chlorine atoms for fluorine, and tested the new chemical, known as DFDT, on fruit flies and mosquitoes. DFDT killed mosquitoes — including species that carry...