Monday, March 30, 2020

An Update on the Coronavirus Treatment

Physicians are using two drugs in combination-hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, which I'll abbreviate HC and AZ-to treat patients with advanced Covid-19 symptoms.

The bedrock of all infectious medicine, from developing treatments for specific infections to treating individual patients, is in vitro laboratory testing and patient trials.

Of 178 hospital patients who tested positive, none had lupus and none were on HC. None of this Wuhan hospital's dermatology department's 80 lupus patients were infected with the novel coronavirus.

Second, consider AZ-the antibiotic marketed as Z-Pak-combined with HC. The French study showed that 57% of 14 Covid-19 patients receiving HC without AZ tested negative for the virus on a nasal swab on day six.

The authors of the French study last week published the results of an additional 80 hospitalized patients receiving a combination of HC and AZ. By day eight of treatment, 93% showed a negative nasopharyngeal swab for the virus.

These drugs are still needed to treat malaria, lupus and other diseases, which makes it important not to exhaust supplies treating Covid-19 patients.

In a perfect world with unlimited supplies, any infected patient could receive treatment.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-update-on-the-coronavirus-treatment-11585509827?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

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