developed a drug could fight Ebola hope of maintaining the corona treatment

When I visited the town of Beni Last year, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), people did not shake hands. disinfectant bottles and buckets of chlorinated water were at the door of any business. Misinformation spread on social networks and news sites and treatment centers in the north-eastern province of North Kivu were attacked by armed militias. At that time, Beni was one of the centers of a devastating epidemic of Ebola, the second deadliest in world history. According to the World Health Organization, some 3,500 people have been sickened by the virus, and more than one fatality died in 2000, by 66%. “It ‘a very difficult situation,” Sister Xeverine, a Catholic nun who was diagnosed with the disease a UNICEF supported kindergarten for children whose parents had done, told me when I saw it in Beni. “Health care professionals need to convince the community that need to be treated.” He continued: “On the other hand, there are people out there that have more influence people to waste treatment.” The outbreak of Ebola in North Kivu seems to have come to an end, as the Crown says panic hit Europe and the United states the WHO, it is since then a new case of Ebola have been February 17 this year. Despite the significant differences in how the virus work (Ebola is far more deadly than the Crown, and is only transmitted by infected body fluids, while COVID-19 is believed to be transmitted through air droplets), there are many similarities in the range of reaction of the public denial that the disease is a problem contact tracing and quarantine compulsory for people who may have contracted the disease. In January of this year, Dr. Richard H. Kaszynski, co-founder of Stanford Solutions, a medical innovation group at Stanford Medical School, and Koichi Yamada, a scientist at the Japanese Toyama Chemical Company, in North Kivu traveled discuss the use of favipiravir, a post-exposure treatment for Ebola, animal studies have shown increased survival when the drug was administered in human trials during the 2015 outbreak in West Africa has suggested the disease that the drug it could potentially be for the patient, who had their blood in low to moderate levels of virus life-saving – and others who had contracted the disease medical staff recently like that accidentally exposed to the Ebola virus. heard on the penultimate day of his trip to North Kivu, Kaszynski, who started a senior medical adviser to the Congolese government, a virus from Wuhan, China spread. He and Yamada asked if favipiravir, the drug has been suggesting that it might be useful against Ebola, could be useful against the crown novel. Favipiravir was originally developed for the treatment of Toyama Chemical, which is owned by Fujifilm, the Japanese photography companies today significant shareholdings in biomedicine has. The drug was named Avigan, and in 2014 was approved in Japan for human consumption. “The Japanese government accumulated 2,000,000 courses for use against influenza,” says Yamada, president of Toyama Director of International Affairs and the leaders favipiravir efforts of society. Together with Japan have built several countries reserves of the drug over the years. The US Department of Defense has purchased 6,000 courses of the drug in 2016 as a therapeutic potential against seasonal flu and the government of the UAE accumulated 50,000 courses as a potential therapeutic agent against respiratory syndrome MERS (Middle East, caused by a crown in the same family as the virus that causes. COVID-19) China an unknown amount of drugs, but its reserves are likely to be significant, as Chinese factories have recently generics (the patent for Avigan expired in China and Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical product a Chinese company, began producing). After politically Trump is reportedly under pressure the US Food and Drug Administration to allow the administration as a potential treatment for favipiravir novel coronavirus. The FDA, however, has not yet approved the drug for use in humans. Kaszynski and Yamada quickly realized that influenza A and B, the two main causes for seasonal influenza, SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, is an RNA virus which means the drug could also possibly working against Fujifilm it. “In particular favipiravir targets something called RNA polymerase, an enzyme essentially that the virus needs to stand out from un’all’interno cell to replicate,” says Kaszynski. “The crown has the same enzyme that has the flu virus.” A 2018 paper proposed by Belgian scientists favipiravir could be developed as a broad-spectrum antiviral against the “RNA neglected and emerging virus.” On February 4, just returned a few days later and Kasynski Yamada from the DRC, the journal Cell Research issued a letter to the editor of Chinese researchers who live trials with several medications, including favipiravir recommended to evaluate their effectiveness against the new crown. At that time, “I probably thought it comes to work,” says Kaszynski. Even the use Japan for drug COVID-19 allows off-label is, Fujifilm has taken no trumpeting the impact of their drug. “The scientific evidence is limited,” says Yamada, and it is unclear what level of gravity of the cases, the drug works. As with Ebola, the drug will work in humans better to have lower levels of new coronavirus in their system, but the dose is currently still being worked out. Tour of the Japanese Society for Infectious Diseases, a corporate medical office in Tokyo, said by the end of February onwards, “it is not known for the relevant gravity and administration times.” As COVID-19 spread around the world in February he began his studies in China the new drug, and announced on March 18, an official of the Chinese Ministry of Health and the technology that the drug was “clearly effective” 340 patients in treatment. “It was independently associated with faster viral game offline” One of the attempts to hospital in the popular Shenzhen third of the drug showed, and 35 patients treated with the drug, the virus in four days deleted, while a group of 45 control patients in same structure, has not received the 11 days took the drug to clear the virus. A multi-center clinical independent comparative study in China showed that favipiravir reduces fever and cough in patients COVID-19 faster than another drug Arbidol and had a recovery rate seventh day. Kaszynski and Yamada Both say that the results from China were not definitive, and that we need more clinical studies with favipiravir. The widespread nature and “individual” off-label use in Japan makes it “almost impossible to judge whether favipiravir is effective or not,” said Yamada. “That’s why we need to have a clinical trial.” Toyama has recently announced that the group would begin a clinical study of 100 patients with the novel coronavirus for 14 days affected. At about $5 per pill, and $650 for a complete favipiravir course it is to produce relatively cheap and easy to mass. One of the lessons learned from the treatment of health crises in poor countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kaszynski notes, is to ensure that the treatments are easy to produce, and it will paralyze the economy has been scheduled for years after an epidemic . Due to the size of the 19-COVID pandemic and the economic damage it has done, the price point is definitely an important therapeutic factor. Since favipiravir comes in the form of tablets, it could be for people with mild symptoms are administered which could pose a burden on already stretched hospital resources, and courses will be distributed to the people would be put in a position at home under quarantine, rather that the hospital staff to handle by injection or otherwise. Unlike other drugs, Kaszynski indicates favipiravir should not have been kept at a controlled temperature, which make it easier to transport and distribution to people who suffer from viruses. But there are reasons to be cautious. Many of the drugs that is touted as possible solutions to COVID-19 offer many strikes against them. For example, a tweet president of the United States Donald Trump recently that chloroquine could be a common anti-malaria treatment against the new crown, although his infectious disease specialist, said that his actions was not demonstrated. Shortly after Trump advertising drugs, two in Lagos, Nigeria, were hospitalized after overdosing on medicine. It also suggests that remdesivir, an injectable drug made by Gilead Sciences, a US pharmaceutical company, could be used against the virus, although concerns about the surface as it affects liver enzymes. And a study published March 18 in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that 99 patients treated with antiviral combination Kaletra, an early front-runner in the race for a cure “was seen no benefit” from medicine. (Still, some still believe Kaletra is effective: the government of Israel, for example, a generic version of the drug approved 19-COVID be used against.) Favipiravir also has its skeptics. According to the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe he was optimistic about the drug at a press conference on February 29 to the Wall Street Journal that the drug has been shown to interfere with the development of animal embryos. For its part, Yamada says that, based on the examination of the medicine for influenza, for the drug “is an excellent security database is” and that adverse effects on unborn embryos, was recorded by drugs. Kaszynski says that soon favipiravir bad press has damaged the image. “Everybody kind of, you know, sees this as boogey man of the match, and that is not the case,” he says. The drug was well tolerated by patients, and there were no serious adverse effects on human subjects. As a result, he says, in the early stages of the outbreak COVID-19 “basically no one was watching.” This could be due to the discourse on COVID-19 management is focused on creating a vaccine to fight the virus, “In some areas, particularly the United States, there is much talk of a cure. In Europe” is not so much talk, says Guy de Selliers, a consulting expert who works with InfraSalience, a recycling company whose work focuses on the reduction of air pollution to connect, doctors and scientists studying favipiravir want governments. “People talk about a vaccine, and there is talk of 12 to 18 months,” he says as a therapeutic may possibly be ready in a few weeks. When building the drug it is easy and distribute it could help the suffering of the people through long periods of quarantine mitigate. Kaszynski says it would scrap studies when favipiravir proven to be harmful, but stressed that the benefits for people with COVID-19 needs to understand better. Together with China and Japan, doctors and scientists in Turkey, Israel, Russia and other countries have already begun to use and test the drug. “And ‘one of the few ways in which humanity is that we have not really explored the full potential,” he said. Do not, he continued, “just a huge disservice to humanity would be.” Niarchos is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines and newspapers. He is currently working on a book about global cobalt market.
Picture copyright by Jerome Delay AP