#monoclonal antibodies covid treatment

[liberalsarecool]

Donald Trump damaged the world.

He took the vaccine, he took the monoclonal antibodies, then spread disinformation.

Trump promoted unproven covid treatments. He tweeted about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. His need to distract/lie was lethal.

[mindblowingscience]

A monoclonal antibody appears effective at neutralizing the numerous variants of SARS-CoV-2, as well as related viruses in animals that could pose a threat if they were to begin spreading in people. The antibody, called SC27, was recently described in an article published in Cell Reports Medicine. The finding opens the possibility of broader, more effective treatments to work against current and future COVID variants.

Continue Reading.

[covid-safer-hotties]

also preserved on our archive

by Rowan Walrath

Public and private funding is lacking, scrambling opportunities to develop treatments

In brief Long COVID is a difficult therapeutic area to work in. It’s a scientifically challenging condition, but perhaps more critically, few want to fund new treatments. Private investors, Big Pharma, and government agencies alike see long COVID as too risky as long as its underlying mechanisms are so poorly understood. This dynamic has hampered the few biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies trying to develop new medicines. The lack of funding has frustrated people with long COVID, who have few options available to them. And crucially, it has snarled research and development, cutting drug development short.

When COVID-19 hit, the biotechnology company Aim ImmunoTech was developing a drug for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, better known as ME/CFS. As more people came down with COVID-19, some began to describe lingering problems that sounded a lot like ME/CFS. In many cases, people who got sick simply never seemed to get better. In others, they recovered completely—or thought they had—only to be waylaid by new problems: fatigue that wouldn’t go away with any amount of rest, brain fog that got in the way of normal conversations, a sudden tendency toward dizziness and fainting, or all the above.

There was a clear overlap between the condition, which patients began calling long COVID, and ME/CFS. People with ME/CFS have a deep, debilitating fatigue. They cannot tolerate much, if any, exercise; walking up a slight incline can mean days of recovery. Those with the most severe cases are bedbound.

Aim’s leaders set out to test whether the company’s drug, Ampligen, which is approved for ME/CFS in Argentina but not yet in the US, might be a good fit for treating long COVID. They started with a tiny study, just 4 people. When most of those participants responded well, they scaled up to 80. While initial data were mixed, people taking Ampligen were generally able to walk farther in a 6 min walk test than those who took a placebo, indicating improvement in baseline fatigue. The company is now making plans for a follow-on study in long COVID.

Aim’s motivation for testing Ampligen in long COVID was twofold. Executives believed they could help people with the condition, given the significant overlap in symptoms with ME/CFS. But they also, plainly, thought there’d be money. They were wrong.

“When we first went out to do this study in long COVID, there was money from . . . RECOVER,” Aim scientific officer Chris McAleer says, referring to Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER), the National Institutes of Health’s $1.7 billion initiative to fund projects investigating causes of, and potential treatments for, long COVID. McAleer says Aim attempted to get RECOVER funds, “believing that we had a therapeutic for these individuals, and we get nothing.”

Instead of funding novel medicines like Ampligen, the NIH has directed most of its RECOVER resources to observational studies designed to learn more about the condition, not treat it. Only last year did the agency begin to fund clinical trials for long COVID treatments, and those investigate the repurposing of approved drugs. What RECOVER is not doing is funding new compounds.

RECOVER is the only federal funding mechanism aimed at long COVID research. Other initiatives, like the $5 billion Project NextGen and the $577 million Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern, put grant money toward next-generation vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and antivirals for COVID-19. They stop short of testing those compounds as long COVID treatments.

Private funding is even harder to come by. Large pharmaceutical companies have mostly stayed away from the condition. (Some RECOVER trials are testing Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral Paxlovid, but a Pfizer spokesperson confirms that Pfizer is not sponsoring those studies.) Most investors have also avoided long COVID: a senior analyst on PitchBook’s biotech team, which tracks industry financing closely, says he isn’t aware of any investment in the space.

“What you need is innovation on this front that’s not driven by profit motive, but impact on global human health,” says Sumit Chanda, an immunologist and microbiologist at Scripps Research who coleads one of the AViDD centers. “We could have been filling in the gaps for things like long COVID, where pharma doesn’t see that there’s a billion-dollar market.”

The few biotech companies that are developing potential treatments for long COVID, including Aim, are usually funding those efforts out of their own balance sheets. Experts warn that such a pattern is not sustainable. At least four companies that were developing long COVID treatments have shut down because of an apparent lack of finances. Others are evaluating a shift away from long COVID.

“It is seen by the industry and by investors as a shot in the dark,” says Radu Pislariu, cofounder and CEO of Laurent Pharmaceuticals, a start-up that’s developing an antiviral and anti-inflammatory for long COVID. “What I know is that nobody wants to hear about COVID. When you say the name COVID, it’s bad . . ., but long COVID is not going anywhere, because COVID-19 is endemic. It will stay. At some point, everyone will realize that we have to do more for it.”

‘Time and patience and money’ Much of the hesitancy to make new medicines stems from the evasive nature of long COVID itself. The condition is multisystemic, affecting the brain, heart, endocrine network, immune system, reproductive organs, and gastrointestinal tract. While researchers are finding increasing evidence for some of the disease’s mechanisms, like viral persistence, immune dysregulation, and mitochondrial dysfunction, they might not uncover a one-size-fits-all treatment.

“Until we have a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of long COVID, I think physicians are doing the best they can with the information they have and the guidance that is available to them,” says Ian Simon, director of the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Long COVID Research and Practice. The research taking place now will eventually guide new therapeutic development, he says.

Meanwhile, time marches on.

By the end of 2023, more than 409 million people worldwide had long COVID, according to a recent review coauthored by two cofounders of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative (PLRC) and several prominent long COVID researchers (Nat. Med. 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03173-6). Most of those 409 million contracted COVID-19 and then long COVID after vaccines and antivirals became available. That fact undercuts the notion that the condition results only from severe cases of COVID-19 contracted before those interventions existed. (Vaccination and treatment with antivirals do correlate with a lower incidence of long COVID but don’t prevent it outright.)

“There is that narrative that long COVID is over,” says Hannah Davis, cofounder of the PLRC and a coauthor of the review, who has had long COVID since 2020. “I think that’s fairly obviously not true.”

The few biotech companies that have taken matters into their own hands, like Aim, are often reduced to small study sizes with limited time frames because they can’t get outside funding.

InflammX Therapeutics, a Florida-based ophthalmology firm headed by former Bausch & Lomb executive Brian Levy, started testing an anti-inflammatory drug candidate called Xiflam after Levy’s daughter came down with long COVID. Xiflam is designed to close connexin 43 (Cx43) hemichannels when they become pathological. The hemichannels, which form in cell membranes, would otherwise allow intracellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to escape and signal the NLRP3 inflammasome to crank up its activity, causing pain and inflammation.

InflammX originally conceived of Xiflam as a treatment for inflammation in various eye disorders, but after Levy familiarized himself with the literature on long COVID, he figured the compound might be useful for people like his daughter.

InflammX set up a small Phase 2a study at a site just outside Boston. The trial will enroll just 20 participants, including Levy’s daughter and InflammX’s chief operating and financial officer, David Pool, who also has long COVID. The study is set up such that participants don’t know if they’re taking Xiflam or a placebo.

Levy says the company tried to communicate with NIH RECOVER staff multiple times but never heard back. “We couldn’t wait,” he says.

Larger firms are similarly disconnected from US federal efforts. COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna appointed a vice president of long COVID last year. Bishoy Rizkalla now oversees a small team studying how the company’s messenger RNA shots could mitigate problems caused by new and latent viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. But Rizkalla says Moderna has no federally funded projects in long COVID.

Federal bureaucracy has slowed down research in other ways. When long COVID appeared, Tonix Pharmaceuticals was developing a possible drug called TNX-102 SL to treat fibromyalgia. The two conditions look similar: they’re painful, fatiguing, and multisystemic, and fibromyalgia can crop up after a viral infection.

But it wasn’t easy to design a study to test the compound in long COVID. Among other issues, the US Food and Drug Administration initially insisted that participants have a positive COVID-19 test confirmed by a laboratory, like a polymerase chain reaction test, to be included in the study. At-home diagnostics wouldn’t count.

“We spent a huge amount of money, and we couldn’t enroll people who had lab-confirmed COVID because no one was going to labs to confirm their COVID,” cofounder and CEO Seth Lederman says. “We just ran out of time and patience and money, frankly.”

Tonix had planned to enroll 450 participants. The company ultimately enrolled only 63. The study failed to meet its primary end point of reducing pain intensity, a result Lederman attributes to the smaller-than-expected sample size.

TNX-102 SL trended toward improvements in fatigue and other areas, like sleep quality and cognitive function, but Tonix is moving away from developing the compound as a long COVID treatment and focusing on developing it for fibromyalgia. If it’s approved, Lederman hopes that physicians will prescribe it to people who meet the clinical criteria for fibromyalgia regardless of whether their condition stems from COVID-19.

“I’m not saying we’re not going to do another study in long COVID, but for the short term, it’s deemphasized,” Lederman says.

Abandoned attempts Without more public or private investment, it’s unclear how research can proceed. The small corner of the private sector that has endeavored to take on long COVID is slowly becoming a graveyard.

Axcella Therapeutics made a big gamble in late 2022. The company pivoted from trying to treat nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, a liver disease, to addressing chronic fatigue in people with long COVID. In doing so, Axcella reoriented itself exclusively around long COVID, laying off most of its staff and abandoning other research activities. People in a 41-person Phase 2a trial of the drug candidate, AXA1125, showed improvement in fatigue scores based on a clinical questionnaire (eClinicalMedicine 2023, DOI: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.101946), but Axcella shut down before it could get its planned 300-person follow-on study up and running.

The fate of AXA1125 may be to gather dust. Axcella’s former executives have moved on to other pursuits. Erstwhile chief medical officer Margaret Koziel, once a champion of AXA1125, says by email that she is “not up to date on current research on long COVID.” Staff at the University of Oxford, which ran the Phase 2a study, were not able to procure information about the planned Phase 2b/3 trial. A spokesperson for Flagship Pioneering, the venture firm that founded Axcella in 2011, declined to comment to C&EN.

Other firms have met similar ends. Ampio Pharmaceuticals dissolved in August after completing only a Phase 1 study to evaluate an inhaled medication called Ampion in people with long COVID who have breathing issues. Biotech firm SolAeroMed shut down before even starting a trial of its bronchodilating medicine for people with long COVID. “Unfortunately we were unable to attract funding to support our clinical work for COVID,” CEO John Dennis says by email.

Another biotech company, Aerium Therapeutics, did manage to get just enough of its monoclonal antibody AER002 manufactured and in the hands of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, before it ended operations. The researchers are now testing AER002 in a Phase 2 trial with people with long COVID. Michael Peluso, an infectious disease clinician and researcher at UCSF and principal investigator of the trial, says that while AER002 may not advance without a company behind it, the study could be valuable for validating long COVID’s mechanisms of disease and providing a proof of concept for monoclonal antibody treatment more generally.

“[Aerium] put a lot of effort into making sure that the study would not be impacted,” Peluso says. “Regardless of the results of this study, doing a follow-up study now that we’ve kind of learned the mechanics of it with modern monoclonals would be really, really interesting.”

‘A squandered opportunity’ In 2022, the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) put about $577 million toward nine research centers that would discover and develop antivirals for various pathogens. Called the Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern, the centers were initially imagined as 5-year projects, enough time to ready multiple candidates for preclinical development. The NIH allocated money for the first 3 years and promised more funds to come later.

The prospect excited John Chodera, a computational chemist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a principal investigator at an AViDD center called the AI-Driven Structure-Enabled Antiviral Platform. Chodera figured that if his team were able to develop a potent antiviral for SARS-CoV-2, it could potentially be used to treat long COVID as well. A predominant theory is that reservoirs of hidden virus in the body cause ongoing symptoms.

But Chodera says NIAID told him and other AViDD investigators that establishing long COVID models was out of scope. And last year, Congress clawed back unspent COVID-19 pandemic relief funds, including the pool of money intended for the AViDD centers’ last 2 years. Lawmakers were supposed to come through with additional funding, Chodera says, but it never materialized. All nine AViDD centers will run out of money come May 2025.

“When we do start to understand what the molecular targets for long COVID are going to be, it’d be very easy to pivot and train our fire on those targets,” says Chanda from Scripps’s AViDD center. “The problem is that it took us probably 2 years to get everything up and going. If you cut the funding after 3 years, we basically have to dismantle it. We don’t have an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, look, this is what we’ve done. We can now take this and train our fire on X, Y, and Z.’ ”

Researchers at multiple AViDD centers confirm that the NIH has offered a 1-year, no-cost extension, but it doesn’t come with additional funds. They now find themselves in the same position as many academic labs: seeking grant money to keep their projects going.

Worse, they say, is that applying for other grants will likely mean splitting up research teams, thus undoing the network effect that these centers were supposed to provide.

“Now what we’ve got is a bunch of half bridges with nowhere to fund the continuation of that work,” says Nathaniel Moorman, cofounder and scientific adviser of the Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiative, which houses an AViDD center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“This was a squandered opportunity, not just for pandemic preparedness but to tackle these unmet needs that are being neglected by biotech and pharma,” Chanda says.

Viral persistence Ann Kwong has been here before. The virologist was among the first industry scientists trying to develop antivirals for hepatitis C virus (HCV) back in the 1990s. Kwong led an antiviral discovery team at the Schering-Plough Research Institute for 6 years. In 1997, Vertex Pharmaceuticals recruited her to lead its new virology group.

Kwong and her team at Vertex developed a number of antivirals for HCV, HIV, and influenza viruses; one was the HCV protease inhibitor telaprevir. She recalls that a major challenge for the HCV antivirals was that scientists didn’t know where in the body the virus was hiding. Kwong says she had to fight to develop an antiviral that targeted the liver since it hadn’t yet been confirmed that HCV primarily resides there. People with chronic hepatitis C would in many cases eventually develop liver failure or cancer, but they presented with other issues too, like brain fog, fatigue, and inflammation.

She sees the same dynamic playing out in long COVID.

“This reminds me of HIV days and HCV days,” Kwong says. “This idea that pharma doesn’t want to work on this because we don’t know things about SARS-CoV-2 and long COVID is bullshit.”

Since January, Kwong has been cooking up something new. She’s approaching long COVID the way she did chronic hepatitis C: treating it as a chronic infection, through a start-up called Persistence Bio. Persistence is still in stealth; its name reflects its mission to create antivirals that can reach hidden reservoirs of persistent SARS-CoV-2, which many researchers believe to be a cause of long COVID.

“Long COVID is really interesting because there’s so many different symptoms,” Kwong says. “As a virologist, I am not surprised, because it’s an amazing virus. It infects every tissue in your body. . . . All the autopsy studies show that it’s in your brain. It’s in your gut. It’s in your lungs. It’s in your heart. To me, all the different symptoms are indicative of where the virus has gone when it infected you.”

Kwong has experienced some of these symptoms firsthand. She contracted COVID-19 while flying home to Massachusetts from Germany in 2020. For about a year afterward, she’d get caught off guard by sudden bouts of fatigue, bending over to catch her breath as she walked around the horse farm where she lives, her legs aching. Those symptoms went away with time and luck, but another round of symptoms roared to life this spring, including what Kwong describes as “partial blackouts.”

Kwong hasn’t been formally diagnosed with long COVID, but she says she “strongly suspects” she has it. Others among Persistence’s team of about 25 also have the condition.

“Long COVID patients have been involved with the founding of our company, and we work closely with them and know how awful the condition can be,” Kwong says. “It is a big motivator for our team.”

Persistence is in the process of fundraising. Kwong says she’s in conversations with private investors, but she and her cofounders are hoping to get public funding too.

On Sept. 23, the NIH is convening a 3-day workshop to review what RECOVER has accomplished and plan the next phase of the initiative. Crucially, that phase will include additional clinical trials. RECOVER’s $1.7 billion in funding includes a recent award of $515 million over the next 4 years. It’s not out of the question that this time, industry players might be invited to the table. Tonix Pharmaceuticals’ Lederman and Aim ImmunoTech’s McAleer will both speak during the workshop.

The US Senate Committee on Appropriations explicitly directed the NIH during an Aug. 1 meeting to prioritize research to understand, diagnose, and treat long COVID. It also recommended that Congress put $1.5 billion toward the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which often partners with industry players. The committee instructed ARPA-H to invest in “high-risk, high-reward research . . . focused on drug trials, development of biomarkers, and research that includes long COVID associated conditions.” Also last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced the Long COVID Research Moonshot Act, which would give the NIH $1 billion a year for a decade to treat and monitor patients.

It’s these kinds of mechanisms that might make a difference for long COVID drug development.

“What I’ve seen a lot is pharma being hesitant to get involved,” says Lisa McCorkell, a cofounder of the PLRC and a coauthor of the recent long COVID review. “Maybe they’ll invest if NIH also matches their investment or something like that. Having those public-private partnerships is really, at this stage, what will propel us forward.”

Chemical & Engineering News ISSN 0009-2347 Copyright © 2024 American Chemical Society

[chronicandironic]

Graphic showing packaging for the Pemgarda monoclonal antibody infusion, with a purple background and bold question marks indicating challenges with accessing this treatment

Pemgarda received emergency authorization from the FDA in March as a preventive medication, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, for Covid-19.

It’s intended for moderately to severely immunocompromised people, who may not mount a strong response to Covid-19 vaccines.

Many patients who are interested in Pemgarda have been unable to get it because of lack of awareness among doctors, a limited number of infusion centers administering it, eligibility criteria, and insurance denials.

The drug’s manufacturer says it is working to increase awareness of Pemgarda and support broader access.

A new drug approved months ago to help prevent Covid-19 infections could be a game changer for high-risk people — if they can get their hands on it. But many say they have struggled to access the medication.

Pemgarda received emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in March as a preventive medication, or pre-exposure prophylaxis (PreP), for moderately and severely immunocompromised Americans.

The drug is a monoclonal antibody given through an infusion, which takes about an hour. Its manufacturer, Invivyd, estimates Pemgarda reduces the risk of a symptomatic Covid-19 infection by 70%. Doctors must monitor patients after the infusion because of a risk of anaphylaxis, which happened with 0.6% of participants in a clinical trial.

Pemgarda costs $5,775 per dose and is given every three months. The manufacturer has also applied for permission from the FDA to use it as a treatment for acute Covid-19.

More than a dozen people told The Sick Times they have been unable to get Pemgarda — blocked by lack of awareness among doctors, an absence of infusion centers giving the drug near their home, strict eligibility criteria, or insurance denials. A few said they were able to receive it but had to jump through a series of hoops to do so.

“It’s pathetic. I am the exact profile of the person who should be receiving this medication,” said Amy Mitchell, 43, who has common variable immune deficiency and has had Covid-19 seven times. “If I can’t get it, who can?”

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Aida Cerundolo

Published: Nov 16, 2023

What do forced sterilizations, the Tuskegee experiment, and the Holocaust have in common? They all demonstrate doctors forgetting their commitment to heal humans.

When doctors redirect their priorities to political matters outside the exam room, patient care suffers. That’s why doctors pledging to further social justice initiatives while treating individual humans may be blinded to the risk of harm.

We’ve seen this time and again throughout history. Social Darwinism in the early 20th century, for example, inspired doctors to pursue a genetically fit society through forced sterilizations of the “feeble-minded.” Doctors conducting the Tuskegee experiment to better understand syphilis caused suffering and death by withholding treatment from impoverished black patients. And German doctors motivated by the Nazis’ twisted idea of a better society marked prisoners for death in the mass extermination of Jews.

Why would people trained to heal inflict such pain on their fellow man?

Emboldened by a faith in the latest science and an assumption that certain humans hold less value than others, these doctors overlooked the harm to individuals while zeroing in on a perceived greater good to society. A shift in focus away from the sanctity of every individual is the Achilles' heel of medicine that makes doctors vulnerable to repeating the same mistakes. As Dr. Ashley K. Fernandes explains in " Why Did So Many Doctors Become Nazis? ," “Society is created for the person, not the person for society, and hence the dignity and integrity of the person and her freedom cannot be sacrificed for the sake of society.” Prioritizing the individual is the guardrail that steers medicine away from future carnage.

But it is exactly this shift in focus from the individual to society that social justice advocates demand in the medical field. The American Medical Association carries the social justice torch in its " Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity ," declaring, “Inequities cannot be understood or adequately addressed if we focus only on individuals, their behavior or their biology.” Doctors are told to “confront inequities and dismantle white supremacy, racism, and other forms of exclusion and structured oppression, as well as embed racial justice and advance equity within and across all aspects of health systems.”

Reducing barriers to treatment is necessary to improve healthcare delivery and minimize disparities. But linking immutable characteristics such as skin color with power and privilege in the medical setting rationalizes the distribution of care based on arbitrary factors in the name of a greater good called social justice. This hazards some patients with negatively designated characteristics as being viewed as less valuable than others, potentially impeding the care they need.

The New York State Department of Health prioritized immutable characteristics when recommending that monoclonal antibodies and antivirals to treat COVID-19 be fast-tracked for those of “non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity” because “longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.” This approach bypassed patients at risk for severe disease simply because they were born the wrong color.

Despite the illogic of immutable characteristics dictating healthcare, some state medical boards have taken heed of the AMA’s call for mandatory anti-racism lessons and require implicit bias training for doctors to obtain or renew their medical license. Similar courses in medical schools ensure dissemination of the idea that patients be viewed through a racial lens.

The AMA’s strategic plan goes so far as to dissect the white population into even more specific subgroups of oppressors, calling out those who are “wealthy, hetero-, able-bodied, male, Christian, U.S.-born” as keepers of a system that permits their own success at the expense of non-whites and non-Christians. Social power dynamics are described in painstaking detail, while the most important power differential in the exam room — that between the doctor and the patient — is ignored.

Patients must trust that doctors are objective and sincere in their mission to heal, no matter the characteristics of the humans in front of them. Categorizing people as oppressors or oppressed, privileged or deprived, based on skin color, ethnicity, religion, or otherwise, is the start of normalizing their dehumanization, a dangerous practice that has historically resulted in unspeakable horrors. A rejection of labels and a focus on the sanctity of every individual is the only insurance against future barbarity in the name of societal gains.

==

This is what systemic racism and systemic sexism look like. Activists call it "equity," and it comes with a death toll.

Needs lawsuits.

[macabretranceremix]

It does bother me how masking has been the only focus of a lot of posts about covid - not because masking isn't important like obviously it is, but you can still get or spread covid while masking provided the exposure is long enough and the mask isn't perfectly sealed (most aren't). A lot of these posts revolve around an almost guarantee that getting covid will lead to severe long covid eventually without taking in other factors like access to treatment, nutrition, and especially ability to rest and mitigate stress level, which are all hindered by capitalism in general. There's very promising research that suggests monoclonal antibodies can treat long covid, leading to sustained remission in severe cases. There is a new monoclonal antibody available for immunocompromised people called Pemgarda that was just given emergency use authorization about a month ago, but it costs around $6,000 without insurance because this is the American healthcare system so of course it does, and it does not appear to have been widely publicized. Rest has been identified as one of the most important factors in protecting against long covid, but good luck finding a job that will let you take enough time off to actually recover, considering how many jobs will even pressure you to work while sick.

I suppose what I'm saying here is that it's possible to imagine a world in which these treatments are widely accessible, not just for immunocompromised people but for everyone who might need it. It's possible to imagine a world in which a worker can take off as much time as they need to recover before going back to work without the stress of losing their job, their housing, or their ability to buy food, and where meals are provided to them while sick, and where testing is free. And in that world masking would still be important, but probably not to the life or death level it is now. Every time we talk about disability justice without that goal in mind, we do ourselves a disservice. We risk losing sight of the fact that it is the capitalist economy that makes disease so disabling, not just in the sense that disability is measured by ability to perform in capitalism but that it is a system that grinds us down to the point that our bodies cannot effectively recover while locking treatment away to all but the privileged few.

[spooniestrong]

C19 National & Public Health Emergencies will end in May, despite—

💔 3 in 5 Adults in the U.S. are at High-risk of severe C19

💔 250,000 deaths in 2022

💔 ~15,000 deaths in Jan 2023 alone

💔 >23 million with #LongCOVID

💔 Healthcare capacity crisis

The removal of the emergencies will greatly impact #elderly, #spoonies, #immunocompromised, #longhaulers who need safe & affordable access to health care & preventative tools.

Based on the @cnn article:

🔺Hospitals will lose the 20% increase in Medicare’s payment rate for treating C19 patients.

🔺The #UNINSURED will lose testing, treatments & 💉C19 shots & boosters.

⚠️C19💉will cost between $82 and $130 per dose

(~3-4X Fed. gov’t has paid, acc. @kaiserhealthnews)

🔺#PRIVATEINSURANCE subscribers could face charges for lab tests, despite ordered by a provider.

🔹C19💉 will be covered for in-network providers for insured people.

🔹Private insurance will pay for the costs of monoclonal antibodies treatment when the Federal supply runs out.

🔺#MEDICARE beneficiaries will face out-of-pocket costs for at-home testing & all treatment.

🔺State #MEDICAID enrollees may face out-of-pocket costs for treatments.

🔹With Medicare & Medicaid, C19💉 & prescribed tests will be covered.

🔺Medicare Advantage plans enrollees will be billed for out-of-network medical facilities.

🔺Starting April 1, states will start kicking people off Medicaid. (~15 million people could be dropped from Medicaid, acc. @HHS.gov )

🔹Americans disenrolled from Medicaid could qualify for other coverage.

🔺Food stamp recipients will lose the supplement of > $95 a month, as of March. (Several states have already stopped providing it.)

🔹Telehealth for Medicare enrollees will continue through 2024. Beneficiaries can use smartphones & receive a wider array of services via telehealth.

🔹FDA will continue to issue emergency use authorizations for shots, tests and treatments.

🔹#Paxlovid and other oral antiviral drugs made available under emergency use authorization will remain covered by Medicare.

These Benefits Will Disappear when Biden Ends the Covid National and Public Health Emergencies in May | @cnnpolitics

https://cnn.it/3YbrB2P

[sunnyuto]

Medical rant time:

Literally fuck the American healthcare/insurance system.

I get migraines, most of which are chronic cluster headaches. The short version of the story is that I started having them when I was 15, didn’t realize they were migraines until I was 21, started treating them just using supplements and NSAIDs through my GP, finally went to see a neurologist this summer and got rescue meds, which only work about 50% of the time, and then in September decided to add on a preventative injectable medication.

There are three monoclonal antibody injections available to treat migraine: Ajovy, Aimovig, and Emgality. My neurologist recommended that I start with Emgality because it’s also used in a different dosage to treat episodic cluster migraines and would therefore probably be more effective for my specific headaches. Emgality requires a loading dose, so they set me up with a two-dose “sample” from their office and sent the monthly one-dose script to my pharmacy. I tried the Emgality and it worked like a charm. I started it almost immediately before I had COVID and despite all of my congestion, I didn’t have a single headache of any kind while I was sick, nor did I have any other headaches or migraines for the month that it was in my system. Super great! Simple, easy, effective treatment! Right?

Wrong.

My insurance decided that it didn’t want to cover the Emgality unless I tried seven other medications and both of the other injectables first. I didn’t not find this out until I got to the pharmacy to pick up my refill and they asked for $800. My provider spent literally a week going back and forth with insurance, resubmitting the PA and doing a peer-to-peer. They were able to waive the oral meds as all the options interact negatively with my other meds, but insurance would not back off about the other injectables, despite the fact that Emgality is the cheapest of the three and we knew it worked for me.

So I elected to try Ajovy, since Aimovig is not recommended for use in people with high blood pressure. I did the Ajovy shot last Thursday and in the eight days since I have had two breakthrough migraines. One I was able to catch early enough to treat with Nurtec, the other I am suffering through right now.

So now thanks to our fucked up insurance system, I have had to waste two months of my life and be in unnecessary pain to try a med that didn’t work despite there being a cheaper alternative that we already knew was effective!

Anyway, I’m sending a note to my neurologist to ask if they’ll try again for the Emgality because I cannot keep doing this.

[abclonal]

Role of Monoclonal Antibodies in Different Clinical Fields

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have emerged as an outstanding class of medically trained professionals, changing the field of medicine and giving new streets to treating an enormous number of diseases. Monoclonal antibodies are produced in the laboratory. These specialized antibodies have gained high attention in the last few years for their ability to target specific cells and molecules associated with disease processes.

As the number of Monoclonal Antibodies for Sale is increasing regularly, patients now have more options for treatment and better outcomes. The development of therapy choices in various clinical fields because of monoclonal antibodies has changed patient considerations. They act as powerful therapeutic agents that play a major role in transforming the landscape of autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders, cancer treatment, infectious diseases, and beyond. The different roles of monoclonal antibodies in different clinical fields that you must know are listed below.

Treatment of cancer: One of the most significant developments in the utilization of monoclonal antibodies is the treatment of cancer. Multiple mAbs have been developed to specifically check the signals that allow cancer cells to grow and spread. Additionally, these antibodies also impact the immune system with the objective to recognize as well as attack the disease cells more effectively. Individually, monoclonal antibodies like trastuzumab and rituximab have altered the treatment landscape for breast cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. With this, they have increased survival rates and improved patient outcomes.

Treatment of autoimmune diseases: Also, the treatment of autoimmune diseases, in which the body's resistant framework mistakenly goes after its tissues, has shown exceptional efficacy utilizing monoclonal antibodies. By focusing on specific immune system components like cytokines or immune cells, these antibodies can control the immune system's responses and reduce inflammation. Monoclonal antibodies like adalimumab and infliximab turn out to be effective in managing conditions like inflammatory bowel disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. They play a major role in providing patients some relief and improving their quality of life.

Infectious diseases: The treatment of infectious diseases benefits from the adaptability of monoclonal antibodies as well. Antibodies can be designed to specifically inhibit or neutralize the effects of pathogens. They prevent them from entering host cells. In the treatment of viral diseases like Coronavirus, HIV, and Ebola, monoclonal antibodies have turned out to be highly effective. Antibody therapies like bamlanivimab and casirivimab/imdevimab have been approved for emergency use in COVID-19 patients. For those who are at high risk of severe illness, this could be a lifeline.

Conditions of the brain: Despite the particular challenges they face, monoclonal antibodies have demonstrated potential for the treatment of neurological disorders. In conditions such as multiple sclerosis, monoclonal antibodies can target specific immune cells that attack the nerve protective covering to reduce disease activity and prevent relapse. The presence of monoclonal antibodies for sale has made it easier for medical experts to make the best use of them. These antibodies can also be utilized to treat conditions other than autoimmune diseases and cancer.

[vizthedatum]

I don’t know why you did it (I read articles and books… I talk to my friends… I cry and try to process with my psychiatrist, therapist, nurses, and other doctors):

Why did you ruthlessly control my life? Keep me trapped? Berate me for being disabled? Refuse to get help for our VERY SERIOUS rodent infestation? Not get your fucking covid booster when I asked you to? Tell me I was going to die and you were going to be permanently disabled because I went to an apartment-warming party full of immunocompromised people who I hadn’t seen in years?

Why did you not fight with me on our wedding day when you fought me on all the others?

Why can’t I remember so many days in 2020?

Why do I remember you ignoring me, giving me the silent treatment, while you talked with a stranger online about… absolutely nothing? I begged for your attention.

I think you’re the one that gave us covid… I keep thinking over and over about it. Because… I wanted to isolate after coming back from the wedding, and you told me you were suicidal about me isolating… so I didn’t isolate. And then we got covid. I don’t even know if you actually had it tbh - YOU NEVER TOOK A TEST. I took a test. Both of our symptoms were so mild. Were you faking yours? I even got monoclonal antibodies (which you refused to get despite your stupid fears of being permanently disabled (like wtf, everyone is or will be disabled in this life) (also I AM FUCKING PERMANENTLY DISABLED, YOU DUMB FUCK)) because you had me so scared I was going to die despite me knowing that my conditions might get worse with long covid but that I would be okay because of the vaccines and access to healthcare. I kept telling you that it would be ok - I’m a fucking epidemiologist, and you have no healthcare know-how. I tried to tell you about the statistics - you didn’t care. Covid was the most convenient thing for you to use as control.

You devalued me - and I let you. I truly believed I wasn’t worth anything I wanted. You kept me full of air by telling me I was smart and pretty - but it was all just a lie because you questioned all of my decisions to the point of gaslighting. You gaslit me so hard that it was criminal. You gave up even faking an interest in my gender presentation, my beauty, my aesthetics, my art - you lost affection for me - you slut shamed me, you fucking ableist prick. You, a person who’s been poly and sexually active since high school, slut shamed your fucking spouse and best friend who kept you as their number one priority until the day they left you.

You gave me a sham wedding. No ring. I wish we could have invited our friends digitally. You broke all your vows. Fake promises. Love bombing and breadcrumbing. You only touched me because it benefited you. You pretended everything was fine when we were around other people. You hated how I made friends. You resented going to the doctor’s office with me.

I think you started resenting me when I needed help with laundry back when we started dating.

Or maybe it was after my endo surgery?

Or maybe it was when you told me you felt betrayed when I was furiously packing before our friends gave us a ride to that one gaming con?

Or maybe it’s because I couldn’t play the games you wanted to play.

Maybe it’s because I wasn’t the puppet you wanted - the puppet you wanted to control, learn only the things you wanted to learn, listen to you rant for hours, fuck in only the ways you wanted without any regard for what would really make me feel good (I fucking adored you and would always try to make you feel good - and you didn’t care).

I fawned and people-pleased so much - just to keep the peace. I was throwing my life away so you could have yours.

That’s it, right? You’re not the only ex who just kept me around because I could do some things that they took advantage of, was nice enough (unless ofc I “acted up” (they all got scared when I was just myself)), and had a warm body to have sex with.

I hate you.

I hate you.

And now, you’re going around telling people that I abused you, that I’m ruining your life, etc.

You’re probably citing my recent relationships and my legal actions against you as signs of how unhinged I am, right? Maybe you think that because I’m openly talking about the abuse, then that’s a sign that I’m crazy and making things up?

I am healing now because I’m not tethered to you.

I fucking dare you to speak your truth. I WANT YOU TO TELL PEOPLE WHAT HAPPENED. You think I’m abusing you? Call me fucking out then.

You are so fucking abusive and delusional. You ruined my life. You have no right to judge me after I broke my body and soul to fucking serve you. You were the one who betrayed me at every turn.

You have no idea how lucky you are that I didn’t and haven’t pressed criminal charges. I hate the justice system more than you do (and you will never know why because you lack the necessary self-awareness and neural pathways to actually empathize with people, which is why you’ll keep abusing your partners, have shallow friendships, and wallow in your fucking useless controlling paranoia) - and Angela Davis? She would totally do what I did.

I hope you stay stoned and dissociated, pretending to be a “kind person” and just isolate yourself indefinitely like you wanted - because then maybe you won’t be such a danger to others.

I hate you.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Yes, there's hope in the fight against Long Covid.

Hope doesn't come in the form of natural immunity or subpar vaccines rolled out after waves of illness have already peaked. It comes in the form of clean indoor air, widespread masking, and better treatments. In that vein, the NIH is finally launching a new batch of clinical trials focused on Long Covid, five total, dedicated to different aspects of the condition. Institutes like Mount Sinai are running clinical trials on repurposed HIV drugs. So is HealthBio, a startup working on immune diseases. (They're testing maraviroc and atorvastatin.) Post-Viral Trials News is sharing updates as they roll in. Of course, the NIH and FDA need steady pressure to make sure they're funding trials that focus on a range of options. Given the urgency of the crisis, we should be doing far more. As Harvard economist David Cutler has said on developing treatments for Long Covid, "There is no amount that's overdoing it." We're talking about a $16 trillion crisis.

We're talking about an urgent need for dozens of expedited clinical trials for drugs that already exist, which have shown effectiveness in preventing and treating Long Covid in its various incarnations. We're talking about making those drugs accessible right now for off-label use, so that Covid survivors can finally get the help they need.

Long Covid is an emergency.

We're going to talk about prescription treatments first, and then supplements and extracts you can find yourself. Up front, you can try services like RTHM and CURE ID that aim to connect patients with treatments without endless waits. (I'm not endorsing them. I'm just telling you they exist.)

Let's dig in.

Healthcare largely abandoned monoclonal antibodies during the first Omicron wave, but some of them remain effective in higher doses as postviral therapies. We've also found new ones. For example: A study in Nature offers 5B8 as a therapy for fibrinogen, a protein in your body that binds to the Covid spike protein during infection. Afterward, that protein starts to behave differently, "forming pro-inflammatory blood clots" that lead to cardiac and brain dysfunction, especially in young patients with mild infections. It also suppresses your natural killer cells, weakening your immune system. So, damaged fibrinogen is the culprit behind a lot of the "mysterious" health problems we're seeing.

As the authors show, "fibrin-targeting immunotherapy may represent a therapeutic intervention for patients with acute Covid-19 and Long Covid." The monoclonal antibody 5B8 "provides protection...without adverse effects." The sooner you get it, the better it works.

A 2024 study in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine also found that the monoclonal antibody regeneron helped Long Covid survivors recover. Researchers "expressed surprise at the swift and comprehensive improvements observed in the patients," adding that "regardless of the duration of their Long Covid experience, significant progress was noted within a mere 5 days of receiving the Regeneron treatment." It might work because it helps your immune system eliminate residual amounts of virus or viral fragments, or it might replace damaged antibodies that attack your cells.

A 2022 study found that another monoclonal antibody, Sotrovimab, helped survivors with persistent viral loads after initial infection who were still reporting fatigue, chest pain, and trouble breathing months after infection. As the researchers note, the patients showed "rapid improvement of symptoms and inflammation markers as well as negative swabs."

Yet another 2022 study in Clinical Infectious Diseases found that a monoclonal antibody treatment called Leronlimab could help Long Covid patients recover by boosting their immune system in cases where Covid downregulated it, causing a drop in their CCR5 levels, a receptor found on a range of cells that fight pathogens, including your CD4 lymphocytes.

The Long Covid Action Project is also developing a list of drugs that desperately need clinical trials and faster deployment. They stress the need for monoclonal antibodies and antivirals like pemivibart, azvudine, ensitrelvir (Xocova), and sofosbuvir. They'll be releasing a full list later this year.

So while these monoclonal antibodies might not save your life during early infection, they can help your recovery.

There should be more clinical trials and off-label use.

Interferon treatments, specifically Interferon-Lambda, have shown the potential to help with immune system problems and cognitive deficits (caused by brain inflammation) after Covid infections.

Also:

A 2022 study in Frontiers in Immunology found that high doses of immunoglobulin have shown "a significant to remarkable clinical benefit" in treating a full range of brain, heart, and lung problems in Long Covid patients. A major 2023 study in Frontiers in Neuroscience confirmed that immunoglobulin lead to significant improvement in neurological problems. As researchers in a third study on immunoglobulins and Long Covid state, we already use this therapy to treat a variety of chronic inflammatory diseases, as well as flu, HIV, and measles. (The NIH has included immunoglobulins in their new clinical trials.)

HIV drugs have also shown promise for helping Long Covid patients. A 2023 study in Clinical Infectious Diseases found that Tenofovir reduced someone's Covid risk regardless of whether they had HIV. A range of studies have supported the use of Tenofovir, Darunavir Ethanolate, and Azvudine for Covid. As we noted earlier, clinical trials are currently testing HIV drugs for Long Covid.

Another study in Antiviral Research found that cobicistat, used to boost HIV antivirals, also fights Covid and leads to a significant reduction in overall risk. The researchers found that higher doses work better. They also found that higher doses work better for ritonavir, one of the key components of Paxlovid. By the way, ritonavir has been used in HIV treatments since the mid-1990s.

The research on repurposed HIV drugs points to the potential of many antiretroviral therapy (ART) medications for Long Covid, given that viral persistence plays a large role in most cases.

When you consider that Paxlovid itself contains an HIV antiviral, it sounds a little less extreme to compare Covid to HIV and discuss repurposing existing drugs.

Finally, studies have shown that molnupiravir and metformin have shown effectiveness against Covid. In particular, a 2024 study in Clinical Infectious Diseases found that metformin prescribed in the early stages of a Covid infection led to a 41 percent drop in Long Covid risk.

Other research has revealed that sometimes it takes a combination of these drugs to help patients recover. In a 2022 study in Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers used nanopore technology to identify the specific variants patients were infected with and select the most effective treatments for that variant. In one case, a Long Covid patient with severe Paxlovid rebound only got better after doctors prescribed Paxlovid again and added remdesivir. Nobody had thought to try that yet.

It worked.

These are the drugs that demand renewed attention and clinical trials, given that most research on Long Covid points to ongoing infection, viral persistence, and the disruption of your immune system, which could mean a downregulated or weakened immune system or an overactive one. We especially need clinical trials that match drugs with specific conditions.

Specialists are going to decide the right dose for prescription drugs. Generally, the research indicates that if a standard dose doesn't work, a higher dose might as long as it doesn't trigger side effects. A combination of drugs can work when a single drug fails.

What can you do if you don't have access to these drugs?

This:

A major 2023 study in Cells found that eriodictyol, a flavonoid extracted from yerba santa, can help with the brain inflammation caused by Covid infections that leads to cognitive deficits and fatigue. Researchers have found that at least part of the "brain fog" from Long Covid happens when the virus triggers immune cells to attack the brain. Eriodictyol can also be derived from citrus fruits, tomatoes, and grapes. As the authors explain, a range of flavonoids "have been reported to prevent neuroinflammation, provide neuroprotection, and reduce cognitive dysfunction, especially brain fog."

The authors of the Cell study list flavanoids liposomal luteolin, oleuropein, and sulforaphane as all beneficial for recovering brain function. They identify formulas called BrainGain and FibroProtek containing flavonoids that helped Long Covid patients with severe brain fog in previous studies. Those contain luteolin. They ultimately recommend ViralProtek, which combines several flavonoids, "alone or together" with eriodictyol.

These formulas aren't just managing symptoms. According to the studies, they're helping you clear viral remnants and rehabilitate your immune system. They inhibit your microglia and mast cells, immune cells that often drive the brain inflammation behind Long Covid cognitive problems.

What else?

A 2022 study in Molecules found promise in nattokinase, "a popular traditional Japanese food made from soybeans fermented by Bacillus subtilis var." Not so coincidentally, nattokinase also "decreases the plasma levels of fibrinogen," the same protein that drives thrombosis in Long Covid patients and indeed "has drawn central attention in thrombolytic drug studies," as well as tumor treatment. It also inhibits the replication of bovine herpes virus. Clinical trials have found no adverse effects from eating natto. In this particular study, the researchers found that nattokinase degrades the Covid spike protein, inhibiting infection. As they conclude, "nattokinase and natto extracts have potential effects on the inhibition of SAS-cOv-2 host cell entry."

Martha Eckey describes natto extracts in more detail here, along with benefits, recommended dosage, and possible side effects. Respondents to her survey reported the best results when they took Solaray's natto extract along with serrapeptase, an enzyme and commonly used drug in Japan and Europe that helps your body break down proteins. A large number of patients reported improvement after taking the natto-serra combination, often within a week or two. Many of them also benefited from adding lumbrokinase, an enzyme shown to facilitate healing.

Like natto, lumbrokinase breaks down fibrin. We're seeing a theme here. Any kind of treatment that breaks down fibrin, whether it's a monoclonal antibody or an enzyme, helps after a Covid infection.

Take a look for yourself:

Eckey discusses cromolyn for brain inflammation and neurological issues, and some people have said it helps with other problems. She also wrote this great post about protecting kids from Long Covid.

A lot of it also applies to adults.

Another surprising study in Viruses from 2021 found that grapeseed extract (V. vinifera) contained dozens of flavonoid compounds that inhibited viral replication, including for Covid. The researchers used concentrations from 500 μg/ml down to 10 μg/ml.

Studies have even found that taurine supplements can do a lot to reduce your Covid risks, including Long Covid. A 2024 study in PLoS One found that the amino acid can serve as both a biomarker and a target for treatment in Long Covid. As they write, taurine has already "shown benefits such as reducing depressive behavior, improving memory, and mitigating age-related issues by addressing cellular senescence, chronic inflammation, DNA damage, and mitochondrial dysfunction." It can play "a potential protective role" in "alleviating the burdens of PCC." If that weren't enough, "taurine supplementation has demonstrated diverse therapeutic properties, including anti-oxidation, anti-aging, antiepileptic, cytoprotective, and cardioprotective effects in many diseases." Yes, even taurine from energy drinks. (And I guess it's a good thing I drink them.)

A standard diet contains about 40-400 mg of taurine per day. Medical use often starts at 6 grams a day.

There's a reason why many of these treatments don't get the attention they deserve, and Timothy Ferriss of all people describes it very well in the opening to The 4-Hour Body. As he learns from talking with a wide range of doctors and medical researchers, the industry frowns on any kind of treatment that doesn't look or feel "elite" enough. There's not a lot of incentive for major research on supplements or cheap, widely available drugs because they're just not cool enough, even if they work. For drug makers, it can't just work. It also has to generate enough profit.

That's what happens when you privatize medicine.

As a society, we have to overcome that. This shortcoming isn't going to help us address the myriad public health challenges of the future.

It's a little ironic that the catchphrase "do your own research," once levied against anti-vaxxers, is now used to insult Long Covid survivors and advocates who are trying desperately to find treatments. The difference is that we're not rejecting medicines.

We're simply not getting them.

This article can't replace a doctor or a nutritionist, but it offers a comprehensive starting point for anyone who needs it. You can do more digging and confirm what's here. You could also just make a list of all the things discussed here and take them to someone you trust, and go from there.

It's crucial for us to develop a range of treatments and therapies for Covid that go beyond the mainstream reliance on Paxlovid and vaccines, conveniently dominated by a single pharmaceutical company.

It won't last forever.

In fact, research has shown that Paxlovid leads increasingly to rebound infections in which "the virus can return unimpeded by the drug, bringing the risk of disease and even death."

That's the part left out by corporate media. Rebound doesn't simply mean another round of Paxlovid. It means decreased effectiveness.

It means evasion.

Just like our mediocre vaccines, Covid is developing resistance to Paxlovid. According to an article in Nature, researchers around the world are now quietly racing to develop alternatives. No doubt, viral evolution offers one of the unspoken reasons why many of us find it so hard to access the drug now. The elites are terrified of losing the thing that enables their denial and wishful thinking.

Here's what one researcher said:

“This type of approach helped to improve HIV drugs, and we think it’s a good way to improve antivirals against SARS-CoV-2,” says Sho Iketani, PhD, assistant professor of medical sciences at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, who co-led the research..."

Western countries are well behind the curve on these fronts. Japan now offers a drug called Xocova (ensitrelvir), arguably more effective than Paxlovid, and it's been sitting in the FDA approval queue for about a year. China approved HIV antivirals for Long Covid back in 2022. While some healthcare workers in Europe and North America know about combining and repurposing drugs, many of them are still busy pretending Covid is over.

It's time for government agencies to pull their heads out of the sand and do their jobs. If there had been more urgency over the last four years, and less favoritism toward one or two drug giants, we would already have these treatments deployed. As things stand, we need leaders to not only run these long overdue clinical trials but also prepare to scale up production considerably, while making sure that everyone has access, not just those with platinum insurance plans. We could already be doing that for emergency off-label use now. Why aren't we?

Although it's infuriating and demoralizing it took us so long to get here, it's encouraging to know that teams of scientists around the world have been working on this crisis and producing results. We just need the gates unlocked.

There's no time to waste.

Let's get moving.

[adnan07]

The interferon response is one of the major innate immunity defences against virus invasion. Interferons induce the expression of diverse interferon-stimulated genes, which can interfere with every step of virus replication. Previous studies identified type I interfer- ons as a promising therapeutic candidate for SARS. In vitro data showed SARS-CoV-2 is even more senSitive to type I interferons than SARS-CoV, suggesting the potential effectiveness of type I interferons in the early treatment of COVID-19 (REF15). In China, vapor inhalation of interferon-a is included in the COVID-19 treatment guideline!5. Clinical trials are ongoing across the world to evaluate the efficacy of different therapies involving interferons, either alone or in combination with other agents52. Immunoglobulin therapy. Convalescent plasma treat- ment is another potential adjunctive therapy for COVID-19. Preliminary findings have suggested improved clinical status after the treatmentl55.1s, The FDA has provided guidance for the use of COVID-19 convalescent plasma under an emergency investigational new drugapplication. However, this treatment may have adverse effects by causing antibody-mediated enhance- ment of infection, transfusion-associated acute lung injury and allergic transfusion reactions. Monoclonal antibody therapy is an effective immuno- therapy for the treatment of some viral infections in select patients. Recent studies reported specific mon- oclonal antibodies neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 infection Inhibition of virus replication. Replication inhibitors include remdesivir (GS-5734), favilavir (T-705), ribavirin, lopinavir and ritonavir. Except for lopinavir and ritonavir, which inhibit 3Clpro, the other three all target RdRp28135 (FIG. 5). Remdesivir has shown activity against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro and in vivo28.136. A clinical study revealed a lower need for oxygen support in patients with COVID-19 (REF 137). Preliminary results of the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT) clinical trial by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) reported that remdesivir can shorten the recovery time in hospitalized adults with COVID-19 by a couple days compared with placebo, but the differ- ence in mortality was not statistically significant38, The FDA has issued an emergency use authorization for rem- desivir for the treatment of hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19. It is also the first approved option by the European Union for treatment of adults and adoles- cents with pneumonia requiring supplemental oxygen. Several international phase III clinical trials are contin- uing to evaluate the safety and efficacy of remdesivir for The treatment of COVID-19. Favilavir (T-705), which is an antiviral drug devel- oped in Japan to treat influenza, has been approved in China, Russia and India for the treatment of COVID-19. A clinical study in China showed that favilavir signif- icantly reduced the signs of improved disease signs on chest imaging and shortened the time to viral learancel, A preliminary report in Japan showed rates of clinical improvement of 73.8% and 87.8%

[colinwilson11]

Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market Will Grow At Highest Pace Owing To Increasing Demand For Effective Treatments

Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) is a disorder characterized by muscle pain and stiffness, usually around the shoulder and hip areas. PMR drugs offer targeted therapies to reduce pain and inflammation. Corticosteroids such as prednisone are commonly prescribed as they suppress immune systems and reduce discomfort. Biologics like humanized monoclonal anti-IL6 receptor antibody drugs like tocilizumab are increasingly being used to treat PMR as well.

The Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market is estimated to be valued at US$ 266 Mn in 2024 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 13% over the forecast period 2024-2031.

Key Takeaways

Key players operating in the Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs are Sparrow Pharmaceuticals, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Roche Chugai, Chugai Pharmaceutical, Genentech Inc.

Growing geriatric population is driving demand as PMR is more prevalent in older adults. Technological advancements are helping develop targeted biologic drugs with lesser side effects compared to traditional corticosteroids.

Market Trends

Increasing preference for biologics over corticosteroids: Due to lesser side effect profile, biologics like tocilizumab are becoming first line choices for PMR treatment. This trend will boost the biologics segment.

Rising R&D into pipeline drugs: Several companies are conducting clinical trials on new molecular entities for PMR. This will expand treatment options if approved.

Market Opportunities

Emerging markets in Asia Pacific: With developing healthcare infrastructure and raising healthcare spends, China, India offer high growth potential for PMR drugs.

Combination therapies: Combining biologics with corticosteroids can enhance efficacy while reducing steroid doses. This presents an opportunity area.

Impact Of COVID-19 On Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market Growth

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the growth of polymyalgia rheumatica drugs market globally. During the pandemic, the focus of healthcare professionals and resources shifted majorly towards managing COVID-19 patients. This led to postponement of various non-critical medical procedures and outpatient department visits. The postponement and cancellation of routine doctor consultations and elective surgeries resulted in reduced diagnosis and treatment rates of polymyalgia rheumatica. Moreover, lockdowns and social distancing measures imposed by various governments restricted the movement of people as well as disrupted the supply chain of drugs manufacturing. This caused shortage of essential drugs used for treatment of polymyalgia rheumatica in different regions. However, with eased lockdowns and restrictions in 2021, the market is recovering slowly as diagnosis and treatments have resumed under strict safety guidelines. The key manufacturers are focusing on developing new drugs and treatment options to cater to the growing needs. They are also working on strengthening the supply chain to avoid future disruptions.

European Region Dominates The Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market

The European region currently dominates the Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market in terms of value. This is majorly attributed to high prevalence of polymyalgia rheumatica in the region coupled with advanced healthcare infrastructure and high healthcare spending by governments as well as patients. Within Europe, countries such as Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, and France collectively account for over 50% of the regional market revenue due to their strong economies and large patient pool affected by the disease. The rising geriatric population which is highly susceptible to polymyalgia rheumatica further supports the market growth in the region. Moreover, active government support for research and manufacturing of innovative treatment options also contributes to Europe's leading position in the global market.

Asia Pacific Emerges As The Fastest Growing Region In The Global Market

The polymyalgia rheumatica drugs market in the Asia Pacific region is estimated to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period. This can be attributed to increasing healthcare expenditure, improving access to diagnosis and treatment, rapidly growing geriatric population, and rising incidence of polymyalgia rheumatica in Asia Pacific countries. Additionally, strategic partnerships between international manufacturers and local players are helping in technology transfer and increasing availability of advanced drugs. Countries like China, India, Japan and South Korea are expected to be the major revenue generators for the APAC market owing to their huge patient bases and emerging economies. The APAC polymyalgia rheumatica drugs market is projected to expand at a CAGR of over 15% until 2031.

Get more insights on this topic: https://www.trendingwebwire.com/polymyalgia-rheumatica-drugs-market-is-estimated-to-witness-high-growth-owing-to-advancements-in-targeted-therapeutics/

Author Bio

Vaagisha brings over three years of expertise as a content editor in the market research domain. Originally a creative writer, she discovered her passion for editing, combining her flair for writing with a meticulous eye for detail. Her ability to craft and refine compelling content makes her an invaluable asset in delivering polished and engaging write-ups. (LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vaagisha-singh-8080b91)

What Are The Key Data Covered In This Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market Report?

:- Market CAGR throughout the predicted period

:- Comprehensive information on the aspects that will drive the Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market's growth between 2024 and 2031.

:- Accurate calculation of the size of the Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market and its contribution to the market, with emphasis on the parent market

:- Realistic forecasts of future trends and changes in consumer behaviour

:- Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market Industry Growth in North America, APAC, Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Africa

:- A complete examination of the market's competitive landscape, as well as extensive information on vendors

:- Detailed examination of the factors that will impede the expansion of Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market vendors

FAQ’s

Q.1 What are the main factors influencing the Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market?

Q.2 Which companies are the major sources in this industry?

Q.3 What are the market’s opportunities, risks, and general structure?

Q.4 Which of the top Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market companies compare in terms of sales, revenue, and prices?

Q.5 Which businesses serve as the Polymyalgia Rheumatica Drugs Market’s distributors, traders, and dealers?

Q.6 How are market types and applications and deals, revenue, and value explored?

Q.7 What does a business area’s assessment of agreements, income, and value implicate?

*Note: 1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research 2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it

[medlama]

Tocilizumab: An Essential Medication for Managing Autoimmune Disorders

Tocilizumab, also known by its brand name ACTEMRA INJECTION, has become an essential treatment for various inflammatory conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and cytokine release syndrome (CRS). More recently, it has played a critical role in managing severe cases of COVID-19. But what exactly is Tocilizumab, how does it work, and what should patients know about its uses and price? In this post, we’ll walk you through the key aspects of Tocilizumab, its significance in healthcare, and what to expect if you’re prescribed this medication.

Tocilizumab: An Overview

Tocilizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets the IL-6 receptor, which is involved in the body’s immune response. IL-6 is a protein that can cause inflammation, particularly in autoimmune diseases where the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells. By inhibiting the IL-6 receptor, Tocilizumab helps reduce inflammation and prevent damage to tissues and organs.

Initially developed for autoimmune disorders like RA, Tocilizumab’s scope has broadened, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is typically administered as an intravenous (IV) infusion or subcutaneous injection, depending on the condition being treated.

Tocilizumab – Uses & Introduction

Tocilizumab is a versatile drug with multiple applications. It is commonly prescribed for autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile idiopathic arthritis, providing relief from debilitating joint pain, swelling, and other symptoms caused by chronic inflammation.

In addition, Tocilizumab is approved for treating cytokine release syndrome (CRS), a severe side effect of cancer therapies like CAR T-cell therapy, where the immune system releases excessive cytokines, leading to dangerous inflammation. In such cases, Tocilizumab helps control this immune overreaction and prevents life-threatening complications.

More recently, Tocilizumab has gained recognition for its effectiveness in treating severe COVID-19 cases, particularly in patients experiencing acute respiratory distress. By reducing the immune system’s overreaction to the virus, Tocilizumab offers critically ill patients a better chance of recovery.

How Does Tocilizumab Work?

Tocilizumab works by targeting and blocking the IL-6 receptor, a protein that plays a critical role in immune regulation. While IL-6 is necessary for normal immune function, excessive IL-6 levels can trigger harmful inflammation, especially in autoimmune diseases and severe infections like COVID-19.

When administered, Tocilizumab binds to the IL-6 receptor and prevents it from signaling the immune system to produce more inflammation. This reduces symptoms such as pain, swelling, and fever, bringing balance to the immune response while still allowing the body to fight infections or other threats.

The drug’s impact varies depending on the condition being treated, but many patients experience significant relief, particularly those with RA and CRS. In the context of COVID-19, Tocilizumab has been shown to lower the need for mechanical ventilation and improve survival rates in severely ill patients.

ACTEMRA INJECTION: A Key Brand

ACTEMRA INJECTION, the branded version of Tocilizumab, is available in two forms: intravenous infusion and subcutaneous injection. The choice between these options depends on the patient’s condition and the severity of their symptoms.

For instance, rheumatoid arthritis patients may prefer the subcutaneous injection for its convenience, as it can be administered at home. Conversely, patients with severe COVID-19 or CRS may require IV infusions, which are given in hospital settings.

Although ACTEMRA INJECTION is generally well-tolerated, potential side effects include headaches, high blood pressure, respiratory infections, and injection site reactions. More serious but rare side effects, such as liver damage and gastrointestinal perforations, make it necessary for patients to be closely monitored throughout treatment.

Tocilizumab Injection Price: What to Expect

The Tocilizumab Injection price can vary based on factors such as dosage, form (IV or subcutaneous), and location. Like many biologic drugs, Tocilizumab is not inexpensive, with costs ranging from several hundred to a few thousand dollars per dose, depending on the treatment plan.

Many health insurance plans cover Tocilizumab, especially when prescribed for FDA-approved uses like rheumatoid arthritis or CRS. However, if you’re concerned about out-of-pocket expenses, it’s essential to explore options regarding the Tocilizumab Injection price. Medlama can help you explore financial assistance programs that may reduce the cost of treatment. Talking to a healthcare or pharmacy counselor can help you secure the best possible offer, ensuring access to this vital medication without significant financial strain.

Side Effects and Monitoring During Treatment

While Tocilizumab is effective and generally safe, patients should be aware of potential side effects. Common side effects include:

Upper respiratory infections like colds and sinus infections

Headaches and dizziness

Injection site reactions such as redness, swelling, or pain

Elevated liver enzymes, which may signal liver stress

More serious but rare side effects include gastrointestinal perforations and severe allergic reactions. Tocilizumab can also weaken the immune system, increasing the risk of infections. Therefore, it’s essential for patients to be closely monitored, particularly those on long-term treatment for conditions like RA.

Patients will undergo regular blood tests to ensure proper liver function and monitor for any potential complications. Despite the risks, the overall benefits of Tocilizumab make it a powerful option for patients who haven’t responded to other treatments.

Conclusion: A Vital Drug for Multiple Conditions

Tocilizumab, marketed as ACTEMRA INJECTION, plays a crucial role in managing autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, as well as life-threatening conditions like severe COVID-19 and cytokine release syndrome. By targeting the IL-6 receptor, it reduces inflammation and provides relief for patients suffering from chronic immune conditions.

While the Tocilizumab Injection price can be high, many patients find the benefits outweigh the cost, especially when financial assistance programs are available. If you or a loved one has been prescribed Tocilizumab, it’s essential to understand the medical and financial aspects of this treatment. For personalized support and assistance in navigating treatment costs, talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacy counselor at Medlama, who can help explore the best options for managing your care.