In a new study, researchers found an immune-dampening drug used by people battling rheumatoid arthritis showed promise in patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19.
The drug, called anakinra, targets pro-inflammatory responses that kick into high gear in advanced COVID-19—the so-called “cytokine storm.”
The research was conducted by a team from the Public Assistance Hospital in Marseille, France.
The study involved 22 very ill patients. Most of whom were so sick they had developed pneumonia.
Ten patients received what at the time was the standard of care (antibiotics, hydroxychloroquine), while the other 12 also received daily IV infusions of anakinra for eight days relatively early after admission to the ICU.
The researchers found among the 10 patients who didn’t get the drug, four required a ventilator to breathe, while the other six required oxygen.
One of the patients died, one lived but was still hooked up to a ventilator after 20 days, and four patients took an average of almost 10 days to leave the ICU.
Among the 12 who got anakinra, only two required a ventilator to breathe, while the other 10 needed oxygen or used the CPAP machine.
However, all of the patients treated with anakinra survived and were discharged from the ICU within a mean of five days.
The findings showed all of the patients treated with anakinra improved clinically with no deaths, strong decreases in oxygen requirements, and more days without invasive mechanical ventilation.
The drug also seemed to have a “rapid” effect, with fever receding at an average of three days after the first intravenous infusion was given.
There were also no adverse side effects observed from anakinra, nor was there any sign of bacterial infection. They also believe that using the drug earlier rather than later may boost its effectiveness.
But it is still difficult to make any real statements about the drug effects when only 22 patients were studied.
There will have to be many of such studies or a very large study looking at hundreds or even thousands of patients treated with different drugs before a real definitive treatment, other than the support of the coronavirus patient, can be recommended.
One author of the study is Dr. Gilles Kaplanski.
The study is published in PNAS.
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