Which treatments do you put hope(s)/expectation(s) in?
NOTE: Whether certain irresponsible politicians tout or discredit certain drugs has no impact on their actual efficacy. (I hope that is self-understood) So, if we could avoid politics, that would be just super-awesome.
I'll start with some prospects. I could write essays on each, but I'll start with a link and a quick judgment. All are not the subject of extensive clinical trials, but few real results have been released yet and many of the studies won't produce results until July or later.
Remdesivir
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/nih-clinical-trial-shows-remdesivir-accelerates-recovery-advanced-covid-19
Certainly was the first to achieve a truly good clinical trial result. The problem is whether they can ramp up production and distribution (which can only be done intravenously) to enough people.
Hydroxychloroquine +/- other elements of its cocktail (Z-Pack & zinc sulfate)
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/chinese-study-finds-hydroxychloroquine-useful-controlling-covid-mortality-1673710-2020-05-02
The VA study was almost worthless. Limiting viral load helps most early in the disease, not when the patient is on a ventilator or almost there. It's still a long shot, but I think the jury is still out on it. I'm not banking on it, but it's good that they're running so many clinical trials on it.
On the positive side, it's very cheap and very easy to produce and administer.
Pluristem stem-cell treatments
https://www.bioworld.com/articles/434261-pluristem-sees-positive-signs-in-preliminary-covid-19-test
Very preliminary, but good very early result and lots of funding. The downside is that it would be many months before the therapy could be widely used.
Plasma Therapy
https://www.wsj.com/articles/researchers-explore-using-common-blood-plasma-treatment-to-fight-coronavirus-11588525200
Seemingly the gambit with the most science behind it, but problems of collection and distribution may limit its usefulness.
Favipiravir
https://www.jwatch.org/na51293/2020/04/09/favipiravir-potential-antiviral-covid-19
Some good early results, it seems to have receded from the headlines. Small clinical trial underway and results expected in July.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04336904
I gotta be honest, I don't hold much hope for any of it. They may help a little and they may even come up with a vaccine, but it seems every time they come up with a vaccine it only works about 20% of the time. I guess the drugs to help fight HIV was a breakthrough, but keep in mind that they now have to swallow a myriad of drugs every day just to stay alive, and even at that, their lives will probably be cut short by AIDS related issues because their immune system is so heavily taxed.
It's like chicken pox. Sure, the symptoms may go away but the little bugger stays in your body and waits till your immune system gets weak and then attacks.
@whodey saidChicken pox is not a great example. I got chicken pox when I was 5 and haven't thought about it since. If COVID is the same way, I think we'll all be thrilled.
I gotta be honest, I don't hold much hope for any of it. They may help a little and they may even come up with a vaccine, but it seems every time they come up with a vaccine it only works about 20% of the time. I guess the drugs to help fight HIV was a breakthrough, but keep in mind that they now have to swallow a myriad of drugs every day just to stay alive, and even at th ...[text shortened]... t the little bugger stays in your body and waits till your immune system gets weak and then attacks.
Surprisingly enough, cigarettes or at least nicotine appears to have an effect on the severity of the disease and not in the way one would expect. Smokers are underrepresented among severe cases. This has a couple of treatment implications, one of which is that when a smoker is hospitalised for covid-19 they should be given nicotine replacement. One might expect cholinergic agonists to be useful in treating severe covid-19 on this basis.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214750020302924?via%3Dihub
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7184428/
@sh76 saidYea, wait till you are in your 80's and all of a sudden you have pain so bad you wish you could die from Shingles.
Chicken pox is not a great example. I got chicken pox when I was 5 and haven't thought about it since. If COVID is the same way, I think we'll all be thrilled.
I merely am trying to drive home the point that viruses are nasty and virtually indestructible.
@sh76 saidI think everyone is stabbing in the dark on this one. I'm sure a vaccine of some kind will be found, but it's my guess that's at least a year away.
Which treatments do you put hope(s)/expectation(s) in?
NOTE: Whether certain irresponsible politicians tout or discredit certain drugs has no impact on their actual efficacy. (I hope that is self-understood) So, if we could avoid politics, that would be just super-awesome.
I'll start with some prospects. I could write essays on each, but I'll start with a link and a quick ...[text shortened]... ical trial underway and results expected in July.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04336904
@mchill saidWhen you say "everyone is stabbing in the dark on this one" do you mean contributors to this thread or the scientific/medical community? In the former case it does rather go with the territory, in the latter I think they're learning how to treat people in the sense that they're getting better at judging things like when to intubate.
I think everyone is stabbing in the dark on this one. I'm sure a vaccine of some kind will be found, but it's my guess that's at least a year away.
