The anti-arthritis drug Sobi reduces the risk of death; heart medications can help prevent COVID-19 blood clots

September 10 (Reuters) – The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that justifies an additional study to corroborate the findings and has not yet been certified by the peer review.

Arthritis medications reduce the risk of death in high-risk patients

Researchers have found that hospitalized patients with COVID-19 at high risk for serious illness and death had significantly better outcomes if they received the anti-inflammatory drug anakinra. To test the drug, sold as Kineret by the Swedish Sobi Inc. (SOBIV.ST), the researchers looked for patients with high blood levels of a protein called suPAR, which is linked to higher odds of needing mechanical respiratory assistance and died by COVID-19. . The trial with 594 patients tested anakinra, which blocks the effects of the inflammatory proteins IL-1-alpha and IL-1-beta, against a placebo. The risk of death was 55% lower in patients receiving anakinra and 80% lower in the sickest patients in the trial, the researchers told Nature Medicine. “The clinical benefit with anakinra treatment was already evident from day 14, and this is of clinical importance because the first 14 days is the period during which a patient is expected to get worse. The benefit of Anakinra is keep until the 28th, ”they said. They note that measuring suPAR allows for a more personalized treatment approach, but its use to guide treatment with COVID-19 can be problematic because testing is not available in all hospitals.

Heart medications can help prevent COVID-19 blood clots

Drugs that prevent blood clots after procedures to clear heart arteries may also be useful for the prevention of clots in patients with COVID-19, new data suggest. The coronavirus is known to affect the genes that control platelets, fragments of blood that form clots. Inflammatory proteins generated by the virus cause platelets to become “hyperreactive” and form clots more easily and frequently. In experiments tested with test tubes described Wednesday in Science Advances, the researchers found that the anticoagulants used after the coronary stent: clopidogrel, sold as Plavix by Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY.N) and Sanofi (SASY.PA), and ticagrelor, sold as Brilinta by AstraZeneca (AZN.L): to prevent platelets in COVID-19 patients from being over-activated by blocking the P2Y12 protein on their surface. If additional studies confirm their results, these P2Y12 inhibitors “may represent a particularly attractive therapy” to reduce the risk of inflammation-related blood clots in COVID-19, the authors say.

Leakage of the Mu variant from antibodies may inform vaccine research

The ability of the Mu variant of the coronavirus to escape antibodies and vaccines may help prepare against other emerging variants, Japanese researchers say. The variant has caused outbreaks in Colombia and is now classified as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization, although it seems unlikely to surpass the much more prevalent Delta variant. In test-tube experiments, the researchers found that Mu is “highly resistant” to antibodies in blood samples from COVID-19 survivors and people who obtained the Pfizer mRNA (PFE.N) and BioNTech vaccine. In fact, the rise used by the virus to break into cells was more resistant to neutralization than all other currently recognized variants of interest and concern, researchers told bioRxiv on Tuesday before the peer review. Dr. Eric Topol of the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California, who did not participate in the research, noted in a tweet on Wednesday, Delta’s high infectivity outweighs Mu’s ability to escape antibodies. However, study co-author Kei Sato of the University of Tokyo said it is important to understand how variations in peak proteins increase the potency of neutralizing antibodies to develop new vaccines and predict advanced infections.

A new study suggests that U.S. data underestimated deaths from nursing homes by COVID-19 and U.S. government data underestimated COVID-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes. A comparison of federal figures with those accounted for by individual states, published Thursday in the JAMA Network Open, finds that the U.S. government missed 43.7% of COVID-19 cases and 40% of deaths in nursing homes at the beginning of the health crisis because these figures were not tracked until May 24, 2020. “Due to the delay in filing federal reports, approximately 68,000 cases and 16,000 were lost. dead in residences, ”said co-author Karen Shen of Harvard University. These account for 11.6% of COVID-19 cases and 14.0% of COVID-19 deaths in residents in nursing homes in 2020, according to the study. “The catastrophe of being a resident in a long-term care center with multiple disabilities was almost a death sentence” at the start of the pandemic, Dr. John Rowe, professor of health and aging policy at the Mailman School of Public Health School at Columbia University who did not participate in the research. “The finding that there was 14% more only underscores this fact.”

Click for a Reuters chart on developing vaccines.

Reports by Nancy Lapid, Megan Brooks and Linda Carroll; Edited by Bill Berkrot

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