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Medicine to prevent a person from becoming infected with the coronavirus and developing the disease. This is the goal of a test launched in Britain, The Guardian reported. Antibody therapy could provide 6 to 12 month immunity against the disease and could be given as emergency treatment to hospitalized patients and nursing home residents. In this way, the appearance of outbreaks with the participation of fragile subjects would be avoided. The drug could also be given to people who live in families where someone has contracted the virus.
Professor Catherine Houlihan, a virologist at University College London Hospitals NHS Trust (UCLH), leads the study called Storm Chaser. “If we can show that this treatment works and can prevent people exposed to the virus from developing” the disease linked “to Covid-19, it would add another element to the arsenal of weapons that is being developed to combat this terrible virus.”
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The drug, according to the online edition of the newspaper, was developed by UCLH and AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company that, together with the University of Oxford, has also created one of the vaccines to be used against the coronavirus.
The aim of the study is to show that the antibody cocktail protects against Covid-19 for a period of between six and 12 months. The subjects involved in the trial receive two doses, one after the other. If approved, it reads, the treatment would be offered to someone who has been exposed to Covid in the previous eight days. The drug could be available from March or April if it gets the go-ahead from the national regulatory body. The study involves ULCH, several other UK hospitals and a network of 100 sites around the world. “To date, we have administered ‘the drug’ to 10 participating subjects (staff, students, and others) who have been exposed to the virus at home, in a health care setting, or in student classrooms,” Houlihan said.
