Preliminary clinical results in China show that Chloroquine
Phosphate, used as anti-malarial, is quite effective in treating novel
coronavirus pneumonia. The drug was banned in Nigeria 14 years ago.
Several other antiviral drugs to treat the novel coronavirus
outbreak in China that has claimed over 1,500 lives are under clinical trials
and some have shown fairly good efficacy, a Chinese official said.
Chinese researchers have narrowed down their focus to a few
existing drugs, including Chloroquine Phosphate, Favipiravir and Remdesivir,
after multiple rounds of screening, Zhang Xinmin, director of the China
National Center for Biotechnology Development under the Ministry of Science and
Technology, told reporters in Beijing.
In vitro experiments have shown that Chloroquine Phosphate,
an antimalarial drug which has been widely used for many years, can effectively
inhibit the novel coronavirus infection.
It is now under clinical trials in more than 10 hospitals in
Beijing and Guangdong, which enrolled a total of over 100 patients. Clinical
trials on the drug will also be launched in central China’s Hunan Province
soon, Zhang was quoted as saying in the state-run Xinhua news agency.
Favipiravir, an influenza drug available on overseas
markets, has been put in a clinical trial in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong
Province, with 70 patients enlisted, he said.
The initial outcome of the trial shows the drug has
relatively obvious efficacy and low adverse reactions.
‘Three to four days after treatment, the group that takes
the drug has a significantly higher turning-negative rate in the viral nucleic
acid than the parallel group,’ he said.
Remdesivir is developed against Ebola infections by Gilead
Sciences, an American pharmaceutical company. It has shown fairly good
antiviral activity against the novel coronavirus at the cellular level.
The China-Japan Friendship Hospital and the Institute of
Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences have been
authorised to conduct a clinical trial on the drug in over 10 hospitals in
Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic in central China’s Hubei Province.
‘Next, we will make timely recommendations on the COVID-19
treatment according to the results of these clinical trials,’ Zhang said.
The researchers scanned more than 70,000 drugs or compounds
through computer simulations and in vitro enzyme activity tests, and selected
5,000 potentially effective drug candidates.
Then they were tested at the cellular level against the
common coronavirus infection, and about 100 drugs were chosen for further
experiments, which helped to select the final drugs for clinical trials, he
said.
The most urgent scientific research task is to improve the
cure rate and reduce the mortality, which rely on effective clinical
treatments, Zhang said.
New products and technologies have been adopted to treat
severe and critically ill patients, a key approach to reduce mortality, and
some have achieved good clinical effects, he said.
One of the recent progresses is the development of
convalescent plasma. It is processed from the plasma collected from recovered
patients, which contains a large amount of protective antibodies.
So far, a total of 11 severe patients from several hospitals
in Wuhan have received the convalescent plasma therapy, with all their clinical
indicators getting better and no obvious adverse reactions.
Clinical studies on the stem cell therapy, which can inhibit
the overreaction of the body’s immune system, have also been carried out to
treat severe patients, Zhang said.
A cause of death for severe and critically ill patients
infected with the COVID-19 is ‘cytokine storm’, which is an overreaction of the
immune system, said Zhou Qi, an academician with the Chinese Academy of
Sciences (CAS).
‘We are also searching for existing drugs that can curb the
appearance of cytokine storm, including drugs against rheumatism. Some of the
drugs that are proven effective at the cellular level have been applied in
clinical trials,’ Zhou said at a press conference.
A trial has been conducted on 14 severe or critically ill
patients aged up to 82 in an affiliated hospital of the University of the CAS,
and the results appeared encouraging, he said.
‘Now, a multi-centre, randomised, parallel-group clinical
trial is underway. If the initial results show a drug is effective, we may
speed up the process and provide severe patients with effective treatments as
soon as possible,’ he added.
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