TRUMP’S MEDICINES AND THEIR AVAILABILITY IN ITALY
Donald Trump has recovered from a Covid-19 infection, which appears to be evolving severely, in a very short time. Had it happened in March he probably wouldn't have been so lucky. What was given to him to get him back on his feet in such a short time? Let's see the cure a bit, starting from the FT data and putting it in an Italian perspective.
REMDESIVIR: Trump has received intravenous injection therapy of remdesivir, an antiviral drug made by the US biotech company Gilead Sciences, for five consecutive days. It works by blocking an enzyme that some viruses have to replicate. Remdesivir was originally developed to treat the Ebola virus, but clinical studies have shown some efficacy in patients with Covid-19 who are moderately ill, accelerating their recovery. It is currently in an advanced test phase in Italy, but was authorized as early as May for the emergency, by the American FDA which expanded its use in August.
SPECIFIC ANTIBODY THERAPY: Also on Friday, Mr. Trump received an 8-gram dose of an experimental antibody therapy created by Regeneron, another US biotech company. This cocktail, currently known as REGN-CoV-2, contains two antibodies designed to bind to different sites on the "spike protein" that the virus uses to enter and infect human cells.
Several hundred patients with relatively mild disease have received REGN-CoV-2 in phase 2 studies which have shown that it reduces the amount of the virus in the body, but studies have been too limited to know whether the drug improves patient outcomes such as shortening the length of hospital stay, reducing the need for mechanical ventilation or improving survival. The action is similar to that of the autoimmune serum, that is through antibodies that affect the virus, except that in the case of those artificially produced, monoclonary, it is a SINGLE ANTIBODY, not a mix. This type of treatment is also being tested in Italy, in various facilities.
DESAMETHASONE: Trump also received dexamethasone – a steroid drug used for the first time 60 years ago – after the oxygen level in his blood dropped. Dr. Conley, her treating physician, told a media briefing on Sunday: "We decided that the potential benefits at the start of the course probably outweighed the risks in this case.
Taking dexamethasone for 10 days reduces deaths among patients requiring ventilation in hospital by a third, according to British research. Last month, the World Health Organization said doctors should treat seriously ill coronavirus patients with dexamethasone or hydrocortisone, another anti-inflammatory steroid that is cheap and widely available. It is a pharmaceutical product already in use in Italy, obviously under medical supervision and prescription.
So a mix of treatments allows even not very young and overweight people to overcome the disease. This does not mean giving up hygiene measures, always useful for other infections, but also taking everything with a little less panic and a little more realism.
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The article TRUMP MEDICINES AND THEIR AVAILABILITY IN ITALY comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/le-medicine-di-trump-e-la-loro-disponibilita-in-italia/ on Fri, 09 Oct 2020 10:15:41 +0000.