COVID-19: There’s no Treatment but Researchers are Getting Creative.
Those of us alive today may have never seen anything like the ongoing 2019 coronavirus pandemic. It therefore makes critical sense to have interest in any pilot study on the pandemic that looks at existing therapies, experimental procedures and traditional medicines. News of garlic and other panacea have no clinical evidence. However, early studies from ground zero in Wuhan, China show that the disease mostly kills the elderly and immunocompromised (sick people), and kills them partly through a cytokine storm (death from increased inflammation). Therefore targeting markers of inflammation like interleukins and interferon-gamma has been exploited in China with Roche’s Actemra (used to treat arthritis), as well as use of antibodies from blood plasma obtained from patients that have recovered from Covid-19. The 1995 movie “Outbreak” is trending on Netflix and dramatizes the importance of using blood from recovering patients to treat the sick. Antivirals like Gilead’s remdesivir and AbbVie’s anti-HIV Kaletra are also being exploited in this pandemic. Doctors also use antibiotics to treat secondary infections which have proven deadly. Vaccines take 1-2 years to develop and be available for use.
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