Coronavirus: Drugs for Patients with Moderate to Mild Symptoms

Coronavirus: Drugs for Patients with Moderate to Mild Symptoms

On September 21, 2020, it was reported that the US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced a few days ago that a new drug that is still in the trial stage can greatly alleviate the severity of new coronavirus pneumonia, thereby reducing the probability of patients requiring hospitalization. Specifically, this new drug is a monoclonal antibody produced by recovered patients, and pharmaceutical companies can replicate it.

According to the report, this is the research result obtained by the company after analyzing the results of a series of internal experiments. The results of this research have not been peer reviewed and have not been published in scientific journals.

However, American epidemiologists believe that the results of this research are exciting. The test process is very rigorous and has achieved very attractive results.

The report pointed out that the trial conducted drug testing on more than 450 patients diagnosed with new coronavirus pneumonia. 1.7% of patients treated with the drug ended up in hospital, while 6% of patients in the placebo control group had to be hospitalized. This figure shows that after using this new drug, the number of patients with serious illnesses has been reduced by 72%. And the symptoms of the first group of patients were also milder than the second group of patients.

According to the report, Eli Lilly’s goal is to test the drug on 800 patients from all ages and risk categories across the United States. At present, many studies related to various treatment methods have been carried out all over the world, and the progress is very fast, and the advancement of the above projects is unprecedented in the medical industry.

This monoclonal antibody has no obvious side effects. Eli Lilly also said that the antibody effect produced by a single dose is sufficient to last for a month.

The novelty of this drug is that it can be applied to patients with mild or moderate symptoms. Currently, the approved drugs are only used for those cases requiring hospitalization. In fact, about 80% of patients have mild or moderate symptoms.

To make monoclonal antibodies, Eli Lilly’s scientists collected plasma from recovered patients, then compared the thousands of recovered antibodies, and finally selected those with stronger effects.