Scientists from Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin found that COVID-19 therapies are better in combination than alone.
They tested the mechanisms of action of antiviral and anti-inflammatory drugs.
They found that treatment effects were best with combination therapy involving both types of drugs. This treatment regimen also had the additional benefit of increasing the time window available for antibody therapy.
The research is published in Molecular Therapy and was conducted by Dr. Emanuel Wyler et al.
SARS-CoV-2 infections continue to result in hospitalizations. The current COVID-19 hospitalization rate is approximately six to seven per 100,000 of the resident population.
Some COVID-19 drugs target the virus itself; others fight the inflammation associated with infection.
First-line treatments include monoclonal antibodies and dexamethasone, a drug with strong anti-inflammatory properties.
In COVID-19, too, the drug has been shown to reliably dampen the body’s inflammatory response.
However, as the drug is associated with various side effects, including an increased risk of fungal infections, it should only be used in a specific and targeted manner.
In the study, the team found evidence that suggests that a combination therapy of antibodies and dexamethasone is more effective than either of these treatments alone.
They say that this type of combination therapy is not included in existing clinical guidelines.
What is more, current guidance stipulates that, in high-risk patients, antibody therapy can only be given in the first seven days following symptom onset.
In clinical practice, dexamethasone is only used once a patient requires oxygen therapy, i.e., at an extremely advanced stage of the disease.
Its use in combination, however, opens entirely new treatment time windows.
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If you care about COVID, please read studies about hormones that could prevent COVID-19 death in older women, and previous COVID-19 infection, but not vaccination, improves antibodies.
For more information about Covid, please see recent studies about vitamin D deficiency linked to severe COVID-19 and death, and results showing CBD from cannabis may inhibit COVID-19 infection.
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