Since July 2020, a drug with remdesivir has been approved as the first drug for the treatment of Covid-19 in Europe - but new WHO findings call everything into question.
The coronavirus * is still a mystery to doctors.
However, doctors worldwide report success in treating the viral infection.
Among other things, a malaria drug and a combination of two proven drugs should have an effect.
There are also successful therapies with blood plasma from people who have already survived a coronavirus infection.
A heartburn drug is also being tested as a potential agent against Covid-19 in a clinical study.
The drug candidate Remdesivir, which is sold under the brand name "Veklury", is said to make coronavirus patients healthy faster.
But new information from the World Health Organization (WHO) raises serious doubts
.
Update from October 16: First approved corona drug with remdesivir shows little or no benefit
Although the study results still have to be checked by experts, the essence of a WHO test series has already leaked: According to the WHO, potential corona drugs have shown little or no benefit.
These include a drug that US President Donald Trump received after he was infected with the Sars-CoV-2 virus: remdesivir.
The drug has also been approved for the treatment of Covid-19 in Europe since July 2020.
In a worldwide series of tests, the WHO examined the influence of the drug on mortality, the length of hospital stay and the point in time at which ventilators were used
.
The solidarity study, coordinated by the WHO, included data from thousands of patients in almost 500 clinics in more than 30 countries.
The WHO emphasized that the results had not yet been published, but had to be checked by experts, as the German press agency dpa informed.
Update from June 26th: The drug "Veklury" is to be used extensively against Covid-19 from next week
The final approval from the European Commission is still missing, but this is considered a formality and so a coronavirus drug is to be approved in Europe for the first time from next week.
The preparation with the active ingredient Remdesivir is to be given the brand name "Veklury".
The drug Remdesivir was originally developed against Ebola infections, but Remdesivir also has an effect against coronavirus infections due to its antiviral properties
.
In studies and within a drug compassionate use program, the drug has already been used in Covid-19 patients in Germany, but the upcoming approval is now an "important milestone in the fight against Covid-19", quoted the Tagesschau as the chief physician of the Infectious Disease Clinic Munich Clinic Schwabing, Clemens Wendtner.
In a study with over 1,000 participants, the study leaders were able to show that the use of Remdesivir shortens the duration of
illness by an average of four days
- from 15 to eleven days.
First and foremost, the active ingredient helps patients with severe respiratory symptoms who need oxygen therapy, says Wendtner.
On the other hand, remdesivir probably does not work in patients with extremely severe lung involvement, which entails artificial ventilation.
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Update from May 19th: Heartburn remedies against coronavirus infection
A stomach protection agent is currently being tested for a possible effect against Covid-19.
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Chinese and American doctors came up with the idea that the stomach drug famotidine could inhibit the multiplication of Sars-CoV-2 *.
The doctors had analyzed over 6,000 medical records and came to a surprising conclusion: many coronavirus patients suffered from heartburn and reflux,
but those who took the inexpensive famotidine were more likely to survive than those who swallowed expensive drugs such as omeprazole
.
A clinical study is currently ongoing in US clinics that
is investigating
the effects of famotidine in the treatment of Covid-19
.
"If it works, we'll know in a few weeks," research director Kevin Tracey is quoted as saying, according to Süddeutscher.
"We didn't want to talk about the subject too early so that there would be no bottlenecks and the wrong conclusions would be drawn."
Update from May 15th: Medicines against the coronavirus available to the masses before summer?
The European Medicines Agency is optimistic: It is possible that drugs effective against the coronavirus could be approved "before summer".
The drug Remdesivir is currently being traded as the best candidate
.
It is an experimental active ingredient that has not yet been approved as a medicinal product and was developed against Ebola and Marburg virus infections.
Clinical tests on coronavirus patients showed that they recovered faster when remdesivir was administered.
However, the following still applies: Long-term data from drug tests against coronavirus infections * are missing.
The head of the European Medicines Agency, Marco Cavaleri, stressed during a statement on May 14th that more data are needed that cover a longer period of time.
However, the first results make him confident, as the editorial network Germany reported.
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.
Update from April 8th, 2020: Erlangen University Hospital treats Covid 19 patients with blood plasma
With the help of blood plasma transfusions, coronavirus patients are treated at Erlangen University Hospital.
To do this, doctors use the blood plasma of people who suffered from Covid-19 but are already healthy again.
In their blood there are antibodies against the disease, which doctors use in treatment.
"The antibodies attack the virus and make it easier for the patient to eliminate the virus," quoted Focus Professor Holger Hackstein, head of the department for transfusion medicine at the University Clinic in Erlangen.
In this way, the patient can recover more quickly and ventilation can also be stopped earlier.
With this form of therapy, it would not fight the symptoms of Covid-19 *, but the cause - the virus.
A mixture of plasma and antibodies is obtained from the donated blood and frozen, according to Hackstein.
After further testing, these patients can be administered.
"
Current scientific data indicate that Covid-19 immune plasma can significantly weaken life-threatening processes,"
said Hackstein.
There are currently 19 Covid-19 patients in the Erlangen University Hospital, including eleven in an intensive care unit.
"If our initiative is successful - which will start in the same way shortly in some other university clinics - this procedure could improve the therapy considerably," says a publication by the Erlangen University Clinic.
The transfusion medicine and haemostasis department of the University Hospital Erlangen
has now been one of the first institutions in Germany to receive official approval for the production of therapeutic plasma for the treatment of seriously ill Covid-19 patients
.
"We are very happy and grateful for the speedy processing of our application documents by the government of Upper Franconia," said Professor Hackstein: "We have been in close contact with the government of Upper Franconia for many weeks. This effort has paid off".
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: Vaccination against the coronavirus: "Vaccine King of India" starts production - although test results are pending
.
Update from April 3rd, 2020: Doctors are focusing on certain drugs in the fight against coronavirus
As the Association of Research-Based Drug Manufacturers (vfa) announced, currently mainly drugs are used against coronavirus infections that are already approved for another disease or are at least in development.
"
Repurposing it can be quicker than a fundamental new development,
" says the vfa website.
The following drug groups are currently being tested for their suitability against Covid-19:
Antiviral drugs
: These were originally developed against HIV, Ebola, Hepatitis C, Influenza *, SARS or MERS (two diseases caused by other coronaviruses) and are supposed to block the virus from multiplying or prevent it from entering lung cells.
According to the vfa, an old malaria drug is also being tested, the effectiveness of which against viruses was only recently discovered.
Immune modulators
, for example against rheumatoid arthritis or inflammatory bowel diseases: These preparations are intended to slow down the body's defense reactions.
Medicines for people with lung disease:
They should ensure that the patient's lungs can supply the blood with enough oxygen.
Update from March 23rd, 2020: Austria successfully tests drug against Covid-19
The Salzburg State Clinic is now reporting initial successes in the treatment of Covid-19.
"
A drug can slow down the so-called inflammatory storm
. The relevant data have not yet been published. They will, however, be published soon. They show that this can reduce the severity of the disease by 90 percent," said Richard Greil, head of the university clinic , quoted by oe24.at.
Another drug gives cause for cautiously good news, according to Greil, according to Merkur *.
Find out
how the flu and Covid-19 differ here
.
Update from March 17th, 2020: When will the vaccine against the coronavirus come?
Although around 40 vaccine projects are underway, it could still take some time before an effective vaccine against the novel coronavirus * comes onto the market.
The prognoses could not be more different: Some doctors expect an effective vaccine as early as 2021, others suspect that no vaccine agents against Sars-CoV-2 could be found in the future either.
The British epidemic expert Jeremy Farrar said in an interview with Der Spiegel in early February that he assumed
that a vaccine against the novel corona virus would come too late to prevent the threatened global spread of the epidemic
.
"And if we are unlucky, it will never succeed," is his gloomy forecast.
Treatment of Covid-19: Doctors use drugs "off-label"
Research is not only focused on vaccine development, researchers are also feverishly looking for antiviral drugs that can be used against Covid-19.
In doing so, they largely concentrate on preparations that have already been approved, with the advantage that they can be administered immediately.
Antiviral preparations are considered to be less effective than active substances against bacteria (e.g. antibiotics), but in many cases they can weaken the course of the disease.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic at the end of 2019, doctors were already using antiviral drugs "off-label", as there are (to this day) no drugs that are specifically effective against the novel pathogen Sars-CoV-2
.
With "off-label-use" is meant "improper use": Medicines are used against a disease for the treatment of which they have no approval from the regulatory authorities.
So far, for example, doctors have used the
HIV drug
* Kaletra
, as it has been observed to improve the symptoms of a corona infection *.
Some ongoing studies should now scientifically test this, as reported by the spectrum portal.
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Sars-CoV-2 and Sars pathogens from 2002/2003: Researchers use similar behavior
Researchers are taking advantage of the similarity between the novel Sars-CoV-2 pathogen and the Sars coronavirus, which triggered a pandemic in 2003 that killed almost 800 people.
"
Both viruses use very similar strategies to penetrate cells and may also trigger the disease via similar mechanisms,
" said Spektrum, quoting infection biologist Markus Hoffmann from the German Primate Center in Göttingen (DPZ): "The existing findings on Sars can therefore help Fight Covid-19 *. "
Hoffmann, his team and DZIF scientists from Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin came to the conclusion that both viruses use the same cell receptor to dock on their target cells.
They were also able to identify a cellular enzyme that is essential for the virus to enter lung cells: the protease TMPRSS2.
An already existing drug that inhibits this protease could therefore represent a promising treatment option, as reported by the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF).
It is Camostat Mesilate
, a drug approved in Japan
for treating
inflammation of the pancreas.
This is currently being examined to see whether it can also prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2.
"We tested SARS-CoV-2 from a patient and found that Camostat Mesilate blocks the virus from penetrating lung cells," said Hoffmann, the first author of the study: "Our results suggest that Camostat Mesilate also protects against Covid-19 could protect ".
But this must be further investigated in the context of clinical studies.
Article dated March
10, 2020: 1,925,811 coronavirus cases have been reported worldwide so far.
There are now 120,449 deaths complained of (as of April 14, 2020).
These figures are extremely worrying, especially
because doctors only have symptomatic treatment options
, but no causal therapy or even vaccination * is available.
However, Thai doctors are now said to have found a way to successfully treat those affected with combination therapy.
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.
Combined therapy with flu and HIV drugs is supposed to fight coronavirus infection
Two doctors from the Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok - specialist Dr.
Kriangsak Atipornwanich and Professor Subsai Kongsangdao - said at a conference in the Thai capital
that a 71-year-old woman experienced marked improvement in symptoms 48 hours after taking two groups of drugs
.
As the Bangkok Post further reported, it was a drug cocktail of the
two drugs lopinavir and ritonavir, which are used for HIV infections *, and a flu drug
.
Two days after the medication was administered, the Chinese patient's condition improved significantly, according to the doctors.
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Coronavirus and flu in comparison: This is how the two viral diseases differ
.
Effective drugs: Chinese patient recovers two days after ingestion
AIDS drugs have already been tested against the novel coronavirus * in China.
"We checked the related information and also found that anti-flu drugs were being used at MERS (
Editor's note
:
MERS in this context stands for
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, a virus from the coronavirus family first mentioned in 2012 which can cause severe respiratory infections, pneumonia and kidney failure in humans) were
effective,
so we combined both groups of drugs,
"said Atipornwanich.
After the medication was administered, the patient would have recovered quickly, the doctor continued.
Now the combination therapy is to be tested further in the laboratory
, said Thai authorities.
So far, 2,613 (as of April 14, 2020) coronavirus infections are known in Thailand.
Sources
:
www.bangkokpost.com
;
www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de
;
www.rki.de;
www.experience.arcgis.com;
www.spektrum.de;
www.spiegel.de;
www.dzif.de;
www.vfa.de;
www.focus.de
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.
