Göttingen researchers identify existing drug with potential to treat Covid-19
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EDIT: I don't mean that this isn't already approved for human use. But there's a whole list [0] of existing drugs being tested, and a lot of them are effective in vitro.
Only if its harmful. What if the drug has been in use for other disease with known side effects, will we still wait for clinical trials?
There even have been several blinded trials, that were discontinued mid-way, because the drugs being tested were so effective.
To continue giving placebo and denying obvious cure would be unethical, and so the trial was stopped, placebo arm cancelled - and everyone got the actual medicine.
in the “just try it and see scenario”, you offer it as a possibility, and everyone who ops in, gets it.
it might not be as scientifically rigorous, but that's a big difference to the patient who suffers from receiving a placebo instead of the real deal
https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/03/03/ther...
They usually have to go through it again, FDA clinical trials (phase i, ii, iii) with different dosage to see what's effective. Increase in dosage can increase chances of side effect or create new ones.
There may be laws to get around or fast track that but pharma company have a dedicated department to figure that out. Just like that one company that causes opioid epidemic.
Unless it's a wonder drug like penicillin was in the 1940s, you need a trial to test whether it works.
Fortunately it’s a drug that’s been around for 50+ years originally for malaria prophylaxis and is easy enough to synthesize.
The downside, is that it is unlikely to be found in the US since we don’t deal with malaria very much.
Note: it had very odd side-affects: sweats, mild fever, nightmares, nausea.
0 - https://www.tevacanada.com/en/canada/our-products/generic-me...
I used to be able to buy it when I lived near Toronto Canada ; but don't know where it is currently available in the USA and Canada.
Also, curious if there is any difference between chloroquine phosphate and sulphate, since I came across both while just reading up on it. Or, either works.
Chinese recommendation is more aggressive and dependent on patient weight: https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/coronavirus-treatment-p...
Beware these drugs have side effects and interaction with other drugs. A particular feature is that they stay in the body for a very long time. It goes without saying that they should only used under the direction of a knowledgeable physician.
https://www.practo.com/medicine-info/camostat-2499-api
I'm just a layperson, but this looks like a run-of-the-mill prescription drug. Hope this helps to allay some concerns and keep the signal-to-noise ratio higher.
And this should be the case for most such existing drugs?
Or are drugs only approved for specific uses so doctors can’t do this?
Interesting idea. Infect everyone with the “mild” version of SARS to protect against the severe one.
You certainly don't want to infect anyone with SARS!
It's like someone showing you a dead man and saying "he is survived by an identical twin brother that is wanted for murder."
The new vaccine will likely be a protein that provokes an immune reaction to some essential part of the virus and it will be made by more effective means like genetic modification of eg. a pet microbe or yeast.
No egg as a side dish I guess.
• Live-attenuated vaccines: these use a weakened (or attenuated) form of the germ that causes a disease.
• Inactivated vaccines: these use the killed version of the germ that causes a disease.
• Subunit, recombinant, polysaccharide, and conjugate vaccines: these use specific pieces of the germ — like its protein, sugar, or capsid (a casing around the germ).
• Toxoid vaccines: these use a toxin (harmful product) made by the germ that causes a disease. They create immunity to the parts of the germ that cause a disease instead of the germ itself.
Two notes:
1. SARS-CoV is the 2003 strain, which is generally accepted as being the more severe - yet more difficult to transmit - strain of coronavirus. So in this case (unless I'm misunderstanding), people who caught and survived the more severe SARS-CoV in 2003-2004 are less likely to be as affected by the milder SARS-CoV-2 strain. Worth noting that the population of people infected by SARS-CoV is not all that high, so the value isn't so much that there's a population protected from SARS-CoV-2 as it's that there's enough of a similarity between the two strains that we could learn a few useful things about treating the latter.
2. The model you described, using a milder agent to protect against a severe one, is the original concept behind vaccines, done by Dr. Edward Jenner with Cowpox to protect against Smallpox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9juIKtY...