@BunsenBurner - that’s pretty cool! And when I looked up the structure, I realized that I’ve actually made some of those analogs. I admire those process chemists who can make that ring structure on a large scale!
Obviously it’s not a cure for COVID since it’s targeted for those in a cytokine storm. But it’s really promising!
Covid-19 antibody therapy could be available by end of the year, biotech CEO says
From CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen
An antibody therapy from Eli Lilly could be on the market by the end of the year, according to the CEO of a biotech firm working with the pharmaceutical giant.
“We’re moving at breakneck speed,” said Carl Hansen, CEO of AbCellera. “It’s like running 100 meters in two seconds.”
The company is two weeks into Phase 2 trials, which will involve hundreds of Covid-19 patients. Some of them will get the antibody drug at varying doses and others will receive a placebo, or a pill that does nothing, and then doctors will compare how each group fares.
He said the Phase 1 trial of a few dozen patients showed the drug was safe.
To make the drug, AbCellera picked “an absolute elite superstar antibody” from someone who had recovered from Covid-19, Hansen said.
The scientists had plenty of antibodies to choose from. In just 10 milliliters of blood, the patient had more than 500 antibodies. The scientists chose the one that was the most potent in fighting off coronavirus and was also easy to develop, clone and manufacture.
That drug was tested in Phase 1 with hospitalized patients and is currently being tested in Phase 2 in patients who are at home.
Hansen said the drug could possibly help another two groups. The first is people who have been exposed to Covid-19 but have not developed any symptoms. The second is people who are at high risk of being exposed to the virus, such as health care workers.
AbCellera has studied blood from about 100 Covid-19 survivors, and if a better antibody turns up, Lilly and AbCellera may add it to the one already being studied, or possibly replace it for a “next generation” version of the drug, Hansen said.
In other words, very much not the flu!
How coronavirus affects the entire body
From CNN’s Maggie Fox
Coronavirus damages not only the lungs, but the kidneys, liver, heart, brain and nervous system, skin and gastrointestinal tract, doctors noted Friday in a review of reports about Covid-19 patients.
The team at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City — one of the hospitals flooded with patients in the spring – went through their own experiences and collected reports from other medical teams around the world.
Their comprehensive picture shows coronavirus attacks virtually every major system in the human body, directly damaging organs and causing the blood to clot, the heart to lose its healthy rhythm, the kidneys to shed blood and protein and the skin to erupt in rashes. It causes headaches, dizziness, muscle aches, stomach pain and other symptoms along with classic respiratory symptoms such as coughing and fever.
“Physicians need to think of COVID-19 as a multisystem disease,” Dr. Aakriti Gupta, a cardiology fellow at Columbia who worked on the review, said in a statement. “There’s a lot of news about clotting but it’s also important to understand that a substantial proportion of these patients suffer kidney, heart, and brain damage, and physicians need to treat those conditions along with the respiratory disease.”
More details: Much of the damage wrought by the virus appears to come because of its affinity for a receptor — a kind of molecular doorway into cells – called ACE2. Cells lining the blood vessels, in the kidneys, the liver ducts, the pancreas, in the intestinal tract and lining the respiratory tract all are covered with ACE2 receptors, which the virus can use to grapple and infect cells, the Columbia team wrote in their review, published in the journal Nature Medicine.
“These findings suggest that multiple-organ injury may occur at least in part due to direct viral tissue damage,” the team wrote.
“This virus is unusual and it’s hard not to take a step back and not be impressed by how many manifestations it has on the human body,” Dr. Mahesh another cardiology fellow who worked on the review, said in a statement.
68% of people tested in single clinic in Queens had coronavirus antibodies, data suggests
From CNN’s Jacqueline Howard
New coronavirus antibody testing data suggests there to be large disparities among neighborhoods hit hardest by the pandemic across New York City, separated by race and class — but more research is needed to confirm the extent of the differences.
Data from CityMD urgent care medical clinics show that more than 68% of people tested positive for antibodies at a clinic in the working-class neighborhood of Corona, Queens, and 56% tested positive at another clinic in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Yet only 13% of people tested positive for antibodies at a clinic in Cobble Hill, a mostly white and wealthy neighborhood in Brooklyn.
The data were first reported in The New York Times on Thursday and a spokesperson for CityMD confirmed to CNN in an email on Friday that “it’s accurate.”
Even though the majority of people tested in those clinics had antibodies, that data do not reflect how many people in the neighborhoods themselves may have antibodies — because some patients in the clinics may not live in the neighborhoods where the clinics are located.
Overall, nationwide data has been clear that Black and Brown communities across the United States have experienced higher rates of hospitalization or death from Covid-19 than White communities.
As of June 12, hospitalization rates among Black and American Indian or Alaska Native people were about five times that of White people, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hispanic or Latino people have a rate about four times that of White people.
CDC report details groups that suffer Covid-19 deaths disproportionately
From CNN’s Jen Christensen
People who were 65 or older, men and people of color who were younger than 65 make up disproportionate shares of Covid-19 deaths in the United States, according to a report released Friday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among the 52,166 Covid-19 deaths reported to CDC from February 12 to May 18, more than 55% were men, nearly 80% were older than age 65. The median age of the people who had died was 78 years old.
Information reported to CDC was missing data about underlying health conditions for about 59% of people who died, so the agency collected supplemental data for about 10,000 deaths.
Among those, 60.6% were male and nearly 75% were 65 years or older. Thirty-five percent were White, 24.9% were Black, 24.4% were Hispanic, 6.3% were Asian, 2.9% were multiracial or another race and .1% were American Indian or Alaskan natives. The median age of death was 71 among Hispanic people, 72 among nonwhite and non-Hispanic people, and 81 among White people.
Among people younger than 65 who died from Covid-19, the percent who were Hispanic and nonwhite – 34.9% and 29.5%, respectively – were more than twice that of White people, 13.2%. The CDC called this difference “notable.” The CDC said more research is needed to understand why there is a difference, but one potential factor may be that more Hispanic and nonwhite people are in the service industry and other essential industries that make it difficult to be physically distant from others.
Among the 10,647 cases with supplementary data, more than 76% had at least one underlying medical condition. For people younger than 65 years old, underlying health conditions seemed to play an even greater role; more than 83% had an underlying medical condition.
The most common underlying health conditions reported among those who died was cardiovascular disease. More than 60% of those who died had some form of heart problems, nearly 40% had diabetes, more than 20% had chronic kidney disease, and just over 19% had chronic lung disease. Diabetes was the most common underlying condition among people younger than 65 – nearly half in that age group had diabetes.
Most people died in hospitals, rather than at home. The median time from the start of the illness to death was 10 days.
Among people younger than 65 years, 7.8% died in an emergency department or at home.
“These out-of-hospital deaths might reflect lack of health care access, delays in seeking care, or diagnostic delays,” the report said. “Health communications campaigns could encourage patients, particularly those with underlying medical conditions, to seek medical care earlier in their illnesses. Additionally, health care providers should be encouraged to consider the possibility of severe disease among younger persons who are Hispanic, nonwhite, or have underlying medical conditions.”
I’m trying to find the CDC report referred to in #1264. Does anyone have a link?
Might be this @“Cardinal Fang”
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e1.htm?s_cid=mm6928e1_w
Thank you @doschicos as always.
As this pandemic continues unabated, glimmers of hope are most welcome.
I hope that trials can be stopped early if phase 3 shows effectiveness. I hate to think of all the people getting placebos!
ps Off topic but: I keep reading about colleges testing students frequently. How are they assured supplies for testing? I am also curious why young people are getting frequent tests while the elderly in facilities don’t seem to be getting tested at all.
Wishful thinking?
Everyone I know who is getting tested seems to have to wait for at least a week for results. Unfortunately this includes all the young people who have been getting tested because they have been among large crowds at protests etc. SO some are coming back positive and they have still been going about their business not quarantining because they have no symptoms.
If they are going to test at colleges, I see no way that it will help unless they have a quicker turnaround.
D1’s mother-in-law works at a special care facility. She gets tested weekly on Thu and she gets the result Fri morning. She just had a grandchild (D1’s nephew), so the MIL feels comfortable to see the baby on weekends. This is in NY state. I think they are doing across all of those facilities in NY now.
Interesting your emphasis on protests instead of activities like parties (Covid parties!), going to bars, and other such social activities which are going on way, way too often and which most contract tracing points to as being the much greater source of contagion than the protests.
Ummmm, this was not any kind of statement on my part. I said “etc” for a reason. There have been many announcements in my area to people who have specifically attended protests/rallys to get tested therefore I used that example.
My Dad is in a Memory Care facility (that is part of a larger Assisted Living Senior/Living facility) in Southern California. My dad has been tested three times (all negative). They tested all the staff and all of the residents (all negative), then later, a staff member tested positive, so they randomly checked some residents (my dad got chosen), and now they just finished testing all the staff and all the residents again. His test came back in 3days.
That’s wonderful - the testing protocols. Wish we had that here in April where Covid flew through our nursing home and was responsible for 60% of my states deaths , including a good friend’s mom. Glad things are moving forward in that regards- at least in some states.
My BIL is a doc in NYC and he gets tested weekly. My Internist wrote a lab slip for antibody test for me and I got the results in 2 days (negative). D and her DH had antibody tests a month ago (both surprisingly negative, given symptoms they’d had). They were both tested yesterday (nasal swab) due to a situation at work. They are now waiting for results.
This article seems intriguing:
“Complications from COVID-19 may depend on von Willebrand factor in the blood”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-complications-covid-von-willebrand-factor.html
If the theory holds true it would suggest both a possible avenue for treatment of infected individuals and a way to better predict the course of the disease.
Protests are no longer occurring where I live, yet we are seeing 1200+ per day positive cases. I suspect it’s spreading by people socializing with people from multiple households, then going to restaurants/work/indoor environments and spreading it further.
I don’t believe for a minute we are set up for massive testing at schools/universities.
Our only hope imo lies with our scientists/medical experts coming up with effective treatments or a vaccine. Appreciate the links to information about what’s going on in those fields.
I am concerned about this. Are any schools/universities going to have the quick saliva or breathalyzer-type testing? If these ambitious planned regular testing programs occur, what about the rest of the population? I’m thinking of all of the large state universities. I think it’s been mentioned before (if not on this thread, then another one) – where do the tests go and who gets prioritized if there are shortages?
@calmom interesting that that article mentioned chloroquine as a possible treatment. ( I have lupus and have to take hydroxychloroquine 6 weeks in advance of summer to address sun sensitivity; I keep wondering if that drug would have benefit if taken for awhile prior to COVID infection).
MA has a quick turnaround of 36-48 hours, and when I went recently, there was only one other car. Yet my mother’s assisted living has not tested a single resident and states that “we do not request or require staff to get tested.” The National Guard was available to do testing in facilities but it seems many did not take advantage of that program.
Visitors are being allowed back in, with distancing and masks, but I do wonder if testing could head off any potential problems now that more people will be going in and out.