Cure?: Don’t know how true this is but read last... - PMRGCAuk

PMRGCAuk

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Cure?

4 years ago•4 Replies

Don’t know how true this is but read last night on iPad that The Sun newspaper said that in Australia they have treated Coronavirus successfully with HIV and malaria drugs and trials are underway. Also the U.K. stocks these drugs. Fingers crossed🤞

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Twistandshout

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SheffieldJane4 years ago

I am afraid that I take anything the Sun says with a great pinch of salt. My hope lies with the development of the vaccine. No offence intended at all. We all need hope. X

Blearyeyed in reply to SheffieldJane4 years ago

I watched a short Documentary from inside Wuhan on BBC News 24 a couple of nights ago were they had been trying to use HIV meds to help , or slow down , the severity of the infection in some hospitalised patients. The driver in the Doc was picking up supplies to give to others which were being donated by HIV Patients .

It did not state that it was a cure though , just one of the many different drugs they were trying , and hoped , may help with individual and severe patients.

I think it will be some time before all these different things , including stuff like Actemra/ Tocilizumab , will be considered as being proven to help reduce the effects of the illness in general , just like with Pred for PMR , they are not stating these drugs are a ' Cure' or ' Preventative' but just drugs that they are experimenting with that may help manage the symptoms while having the infection itself for some Patients.

The Documentary was interesting though .

scats in reply to Blearyeyed4 years ago

I saw it too, I think I mentioned yesterday. Very good worth watching.

PMRproAmbassador4 years ago

Just to answer the question in situ:

Several different existing drugs have been tried in China during their outbreak and some have been found to apparently help recovery in the patients who develop the pneumonia and become seriously, even fatally, ill.

It has now become difficult to recruit patients in China so the trials are being spread to other countries with growing epidemics including Australia and Italy that I know of. In Italy tocilizumab resulted in a significant improvement in 3 of 6 patients which is promising.

However - whatever the media suggest, it is NOT a cure. And while any of these drugs can be used off-label, clinical trials are required to establish if it is safe to use in a given disease. Clinical trials can be rushed to a conclusion for such short-term benefits, it takes much longer to see if they are safer in the longer term.

The same applies to vaccines - they take well over a year to establish efficacy and basic safety.

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