An antiviral drug that helps speed up recovery for Corona patients

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According to the “Medical News” site, Dr. Jordan Field, a liver specialist at the Toronto Center for Liver Diseases, University Health Network said, “This treatment has great curative potential, especially at this moment when we see aggressive variants of the virus spreading around the world and are less sensitive to both Vaccines and antibody therapy.

According to the study, published today in the journal Lancet Respiratory MedicineSo, patients who received a single injection of interferon lambda were four times more likely to clear up the infection within seven days, compared to a group treated with a placebo.

“The people who were treated got rid of the virus quickly, and the effect was most pronounced in people with the highest viral levels. We also saw a trend towards rapid improvement of respiratory symptoms in the treatment group,” Dr. Field explained.

Participants with higher viral levels (more than 1 million copies per ml) were more likely to clear up with the treatment compared to placebo: 79% received the treatment compared to 38% in the placebo group; The virus levels decreased rapidly in everyone in the treatment group.

Benefits of treatment and its impact on public health

Rapid removal has many benefits, especially in those with high viral levels, as those cases are associated with more severe disease and a greater risk of spreading the infection to others.

Of the 60 patients followed in the study, five went to emergency rooms with worsening respiratory symptoms.

Of these, four were in the placebo group, while only one was in the group that received the actual drug.

Rapidly lowering the level of the virus prevents people from getting worse and potentially reduces the risk of spreading the disease to others, and this may have an additional important public health impact.

Interferon lambda is a protein that the body produces in response to a viral infection that has the ability to activate a number of cellular pathways to kill invading viruses.

The coronavirus that causes corona prevents the body from producing interferon, which is one of the ways in which the body’s immune system avoids controlling it. Treatment with antiviral activates the same pathways that kill viruses in cells.

Because IFN activates many virus-killing pathways, resistance due to “new strains” of the virus, which may be a problem with some treatments, is not a concern for IFN lambda.

Differs from Interferon-lambda For other interferons because it uses receptors that are only present in some tissues of the body. It is very active in the lung, liver, intestine, and all places where there is a virus COVID-19 It is able to reproduce, but it is inactive in other places resulting in far fewer side effects than other interferons.

In the experiment, those who were treated with: interferon-lambda Similar side effects to those who received the placebo.

Peginterferon-lambda (Used in this study) is a long-acting version of the drug developed by a company Eiger BioPharm Pharmaceuticals Which may be given as a single injection under the skin with a small needle (such as insulin).

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