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$15 drug gets COVID patients off oxygen support in under week – study:
Fourteen out of 15 severe COVID-19 patients who were treated in an investigator-initiated interventional open-label clinical study of the drug TriCor (fenofibrate)[*] didn't require oxygen support within a week of treatment and were released from the hospital, according to the results of a new Hebrew University of Jerusalem study.
Fenofibrate is an FDA-approved oral medication. The results were published on Researchsquare.com and are currently under peer review.
Specifically, the team that was led by HU's Prof. Yaakov Nahmias carried out the study at Israel's Barzilai Medical Center in coordination with the hospital's head of the Infectious Disease Unit, Prof. Shlomo Maayan, and with support from Abbott Laboratories.
[...] The 15 treated patients all had pneumonia and required oxygen support. They were also older with multiple comorbidities, ranging from diabetes and obesity to high blood pressure.
"The results were dramatic," Nahmias told The Jerusalem Post. "Progressive inflammation markers, which are the hallmark of deteriorative COVID-19, dropped within 48 hours of treatment. Moreover, 14 of the 15 severe patients didn't require oxygen support within a week of treatment." The 15th patient was off oxygen within 10 days.
When looking at the data on other similar severe patients, less than 30% of them on average are removed from oxygen support within a week. In other words, fenofibrate could dramatically shorten the treatment time for severe COVID patients.
"We know these kinds of patients deteriorate really fast, develop a cytokine storm in five to seven days and that it can take weeks to treat them and for them to get better," Nahmias said. "We gave these patients fenofibrate and the study shows inflammation dropped incredibly fast. They did not seem to develop a cytokine storm[**] at all."
Cytokine storms are aggressive inflammatory responses to illness.
[*] Fenofibrate entries on MedlinePlus and Wikipedia.
[**] Cytokine storm on Wikipedia.
Journal Reference:
Yaakov Nahmias, Avner Ehrlich, Konstantinos Ioannidis, et al. Metabolic Regulation of SARS-CoV-2 Infection, (DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-770724/v1)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DrkShadow on Sunday August 29 2021, @12:41AM (15 children)
Vaccines, by themselves, are absolutely enough to beat covid.
That was the point of them, and that is what they've accomplished.
wtf?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 29 2021, @01:04AM (2 children)
You are wrong. Fully vaccinated people are getting the Delta COVID variant.
The vaccine helps, but there is still a nonnegligible chance you'll catch COVID anyway, the so-called "breakthrough" infection. For just a couple high profile examples, look at these public figures: Melissa Joan Hart and Jesse Jackson...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/20/entertainment/melissa-joan-hart/index.html [cnn.com]
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/jesse-jackson-fairly-hospital-covid-79624289 [go.com]
I am sorry if you have wrapped your identity up into the vaccine is a magic solution camp.
(Score: 5, Informative) by epitaxial on Sunday August 29 2021, @02:35AM
This tells it all right here. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1017012853/97-of-people-entering-hospitals-for-covid-19-are-unvaccinated [npr.org]
The vaccines work. If you are infected then the symptoms are greatly reduced.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 29 2021, @08:04AM
Apparently the vaccine is enough that you can still talk about how catching COVID is nasty. Those without a vaccine end up on ventilators, not giving interviews.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday August 29 2021, @03:02AM (7 children)
It's not yet clear how effective the vaccines are against the delta strain. They certainly appear to help, but since I personally know of one "breakthrough" case where a vaccinated person got COVID, and I don' t know that many people, I conclude that they probably aren't that rare.
OTOH, I don't know how serious a case the person got. HIPAA keeps that kind of information from spreading. (Actually, I don't know who the person is, just that it's one of around 150 people who live in the same building that I do.)
So don't think that the vaccine is a magic shield against COVID, at least not against the delta strain. It helps a LOT, but that's not the same thing.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 29 2021, @12:59PM
HIPAA protects health information of individuals from spreading, your political leaders are "shaping" the aggregate information that is released to protect their agendae.
HIPAA doesn't do anything about information that individuals choose to release. We have several friends-of-friends who have contracted COVID (presumably delta) in spite of being fully vaccinated, some report mild symptoms, some severe, I believe one or two hospitalized.
The reasonable number I have heard is that the Pfizer vaccine confers an 8x increase in immune response, on average. So: in a population of 100,000 fully vaccinated, you should expect transmission rates, severe cases, hospitalizations and deaths to be approximately 1/8th of what they would be in a population of 100,000 unvaccinated. In a population of 100,000 that is 1/2 fully vaccinated and 1/2 not, that translates to an R value of approximately 0.56x the R value of an unvaccinated population - which would have been good enough to stop the original COVID strain, but doesn't seem good enough for delta.
The thing I'm super-pissed about the whole episode is: if we had taken social distancing, masking, WFH, lockdown, etc. seriously a month earlier, and kept it serious until the vaccination rollout was 40% or better, I don't think we'd even have a delta variant, at least not until many years later than we got it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Sunday August 29 2021, @12:59PM (5 children)
its more than 2x (200%) chance of hospitalization if non-vaxed, due to delta.
for those with 2 doses of vax, there was NO difference between alpha and delta, in terms of being in the hosp.
(dr. john campbell, analysis source)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday August 29 2021, @01:37PM (4 children)
If there's no difference in the probability of catching COVID, then the vaccine was very oversold. While I *do* believe it was oversold, I don't believe that it was THAT oversold. Several instances reported second hand cause me to suspect that the delta strain is much more likely to infect someone who has been vaccinated than were the earlier strains. This is, of course, based on anecdotal data, and therefore shouldn't be given any certainty, but studies have been wrong before now, and I don't know his study. (I don't follow youtube.) Since he also pushes ivermectin I consider his more dubious than I did before looking him up.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Sunday August 29 2021, @02:40PM
re: cambell, he follows the numbers and when he finds numbers, he wont dispute them. watch him over time and he admits when earlier analysis was wrong (many dont do that).
he takes his numbers from the british equiv of the cdc, and for the US, the cdc. so I trust that when he directly quotes them, its real data. direct quotes are in italics, on his walk-thrus (he uses old school paper since, well, he's from that era).
dont trust 100% of anyone's words, but more often than not, this guy is worth listening to. imho of course.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Opportunist on Monday August 30 2021, @09:25AM (2 children)
Frankly, if the vaccine changes an infection from "start praying for survival, and if you survive, start praying for no lasting effects" to "feeling kinda woozy for a few days like with a cold", I wouldn't consider it oversold.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday August 30 2021, @01:41PM (1 child)
Unfortunately, you still have to "pray for no lasting effects" even if the case is milder. How often is a question I haven't seen answered. Actually, I haven't seen it answered even if you aren't vaccinated, except that we know lasting effects like death are much more common in that case.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday August 30 2021, @02:00PM
Well, at least once you're dead your condition is about as stable as it could possibly be...
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Sunday August 29 2021, @07:36AM (3 children)
Vaccines were enough to send smallpox back to the Hell it came from. We will have to work harder against COVID because it's more contagious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 29 2021, @05:04PM
I'll get right on that boss *cracks open beer*
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday August 30 2021, @09:22AM (1 child)
It's more that back with Smallpox people knew it's serious because everyone knew someone who died from it, so people were a LOT more eager to get vaccinated when the vaccine became available. Hell, my grandma was about to kill the clerk when he told her that I wouldn't get vaccinated against smallpox because "it's over". She was actually old enough to remember very well what a killer it is.
Maybe we need that kind of information again before people start getting smarter.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday September 01 2021, @05:42AM
There was lots of vaccine denial back then too, even with all the people dying. The poorer minorities, the religious who figured God would protect them, etc. Eventually laws were passed forcing vaccination and that is a large part of the reason that there is no more smallpox.