The COVID-19 Delta variant is threatening a worldwide catastrophe.
When policy makers ask physicians if there is a treatment available which can effectively address the challenge presented by the huge number of people hospitalized with this variant their answer is that there is no “effective” treatment.
The problem is that the policy makers apply a layman’s understanding of the term “effective”.
When physicians says a treatment is “effective” they mean that double blind studies have established that a placebo administered in a similar fashion doesn’t have the same success.
This is a testing process which can take a considerable amount of time and possibly even raise ethical issues during a pandemic.
When laymen say a treatment is “effective” they mean that patients who receive the treatment respond favorably.
So when policy makers hear doctors say that it is not known yet if a given treatment is “effective” they think that means that the treatment might not necessarily help patients.
This when the policy makers should be asking the doctors:
“I don’t really care if the treatment is no better than a placebo – just tell me two things:
#1. Is it safe to administer?
#2. If it is administered can I expect a significantly positive result REGARDLESS OF THE REASON?
But they apparently do not ask these questions.
This is the tragedy of the failure to roll out the Israeli EXO-CD24 for immediate worldwide distribution
The drug was successfully tested both in Israel and in larger follow up testing in Greece.
Read here for a Hebrew article about the test results.
There seems to be no question that the treatment is both safe and what a layman would term “effective”.
But the world waits for double blind testing so that physicians will also call it “effective.”
It is an idea drug: as the inventor, Prof. Nadir Arber of Ichilov Hospital notes, it “can be produced quickly and efficiently and at a very low cost in every pharmaceutical facility in the country, and in a short time globally.”
And in sharp contrast to the vaccinations, it does not have challenging storage requirements.
And since It is inhaled rather than injected, administration of the medication is considerably less demanding for skilled staff.
This treatment is ideal for both the “first world” and “third world”.
EXO-CD24 won’t stop people from being infected by COVID-19. But it may stop them from dying. And it will make it possible for most of them to be discharged in a matter of days so that they don’t overwhelm the hospitals.
Will decision makers finally “think out of the box” built by the medical definition of “effective”?
Source: Dr. Aaron Lerner – Arutz Sheva
The Israeli inventor of a “precision medicine” for COVID-19 is “very optimistic,” after an 88-person hospital trial entered its final day without a single patient ending up on a ventilator.
The next phase of the drug trial will see a trial performed with some in a group given a placebo.
After a first trial in Israel, this trial, is taking place in Greece, sponsored by the government in Athens, involving moderate and serious patients aged up to 85.
Almost 90 percent of them were released within five days, although some remain hospitalized.
The patients were given the inhaled drug EXO-CD24, developed at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center.
“Doctors reported good responses, and this is very encouraging and supports our hope that this drug could be a game changer,” the medication’s inventor, senior Ichilov doctor Prof. Nadir Arber, told The Times of Israel.
As well as reporting what appeared to be positive responses, doctors found that none of the patients needed to be intubated and placed on ventilators, and none died, despite the severity of their conditions.
“Patients selected had moderate to high severity disease, and you would expect some would be intubated or stay in hospital for longer,” said Arber.
He stressed that he was not involved in running the trial, which was conducted by Greek doctors and overseen by Dr. Sotiris Tsiodras, the national coronavirus commissioner for Greece.
Arber acknowledged that firm conclusions can’t be drawn until the trial is followed up by testing that involves a group with some patients being given a placebo for comparison.
“As much as we are optimistic now, there must be a placebo trial,” Arber said.
The drug tackles the coronavirus using a molecule, CD24, that Arber spent 25 years researching in the hope it would help cancer patients.
In February, the approach impressed visiting Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who decided to initiate and sponsor the trial in Greece.
Ichilov has since teamed up with an Israeli pharmaceutical company to advance the testing process.
Arber thinks that the big advantage of his drug over steroids, which are now commonly given to coronavirus patients, is that it doesn’t impact the immune system as a whole but rather takes a “precision” approach.
“We are not suppressing or altering the immune system, but rather restoring it to normality by controlling the aspect of the system that causes the cytokine storm, the overreaction of the immune system that is often the cause of serious COVID illness,” he said.
Source: Nathan Jeffay – TOI