Vitamin C, drugs made from plasma of survivals, and anti-retroviral are the latest breakthroughs scientists and medical experts made in the drive to end the scourge of Coronavirus across the world.
A report the Daily Mail UK published revealed that in China a study is under way to see if high doses of vitamin C can help fight off the disease.
Scientists at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University are testing its effects on 120 patients who have the virus, giving them daily infusions of 24g of vitamin C for seven days. Results have not yet been published.
The dosage used in China is around 60 times as much as the British National Health Service (NHS) recommended amount, and 24 times the amount tested against colds in reviews by Cochrane.
Scientists are also getting closer to successfully treating the coronavirus using blood from patients who have recovered, according to the Guardian.
A Japanese drug-maker Takeda is developing a drug using parts of the immune system taken from people who have caught the virus and recovered from it.
The treatment, known as the plasma-derived therapy, works by putting disease-fighting proteins (antibodies) from recovered patients’ blood into people still infected.
It has been used to tackle Ebola. But for coronavirus, it could take more than one recovered patient to treat a single sick person.
Chinese hospitals are already using the therapy.
TAK-888, the expected patent name, could only be used on a one-to-one ratio of sick patients to recovered ones, at best.
Another company, Regeneron, is trying to make a similar treatment by working out which antibodies work against the coronavirus and developing them in a lab.
Chinese medics have already been using the treatment in their own hospitals but haven’t developed a drug that can be used more widely.
No fewer than 11 patients at a hospital in Wuhan had already received plasma infusions by February 17.
In Spain, there’s also a lucky break. There are reports that a patient was successfully treated using Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) and multiple sclerosis drugs.
The country’s first case last month is said to have made a full recovery at the Virgen del Rocio Hospital in Seville.
Miguel Angel Benitez, 62, was treated with the antiretroviral drug lopinavir-ritonavir, sold under the brand name Kaletra.
The tablets prevent the virus from multiplying in the blood.
Medics also injected Mr. Benitez with beta interferons, proteins which reduce inflammation and are used to treat MS sufferers.
Head of infectious diseases at Madrid’s Ramon y Cajal hospital, Santiago Moreno, said the coronavirus is ‘very similar to HIV’.
But the experts have yet to recommend it.
Samuel gbenga
March 14, 2020 at 3:13 pm
Good one