Arthritis drug shows promise for only seriously ill patients of COVID-19

With several healthcare institutions well into weeks of their respective clinical trials for drugs against COVID-19, some are reportedly showing promise. One of the more recent ones that were featured in headlines was conducted by a group of hospitals in New Work. There are currently three kinds of medication being tested: Sarilumab, Remdesivir, and Famotidine. The latter is used to treat heartburn, which makes it interesting if it is proven effective. Now, it appears that another experiment is using medicine for rheumatoid arthritis to treat patients.

The drug in question is called Kevzara and is manufactured by Sanofi and Regeneron. As CNBC reports, only patients who are considered in critical condition are being treated with the medication. The ongoing research supposedly shows that it does not have any effect on those with early stages of COVID-19. Hence, the team is focusing on people with advanced symptoms.

Regeneron is purportedly working on an antibody treatment that will begin clinical trials two months from now. Kevzara is a different drug that evidently blocks the pathway of coronavirus so that it cannot trigger lung inflammation. Studies in China allegedly show benefits after SARS-CoV-2 patients were given Actemra from Roche, which inhibits what medical pundits call IL-6. Earlier this week, results published by the researchers revealed more about the efficacy of the treatments.

As indicated above, COVID-19 patients involved in the trials were classified into two categories: severe and critical. The former ones are those who were not on ventilators and required low levels of supplemental oxygen to breath. Meanwhile, the later are individuals who are already hooked up to machines with high-flow oxygen in ICUs. After administering the mediation their improvements were recorded only on advanced cases in contrast to others who received a placebo.

Regeneron chief scientific officer Dr. George Yancopoulos stated in an interview that, "there's still hope here, but I would say we're going in with eyes wide open, just as we went into first part of the study." He then highlighted a fact wherein results that should be considered must come from strictly controlled trials only. Although a cure or vaccine is still not available, it seems that healthcare experts are making some headway into understanding coronavirus and treating COVID-19.