Treatment with interferon-α2b speeds up recovery of COVID-19 patients in exploratory study Digest
From the article:
“Interferons are our first line of defence against any and all viruses - but viruses such as corona-viruses have co-evolved to very specifically block an interferon response … Treatment with interferon will override the inhibitory effects of the virus.”
Fish says that the research team considered IFN-α therapy for COVID-19 after they demonstrated interferons had therapeutic benefits during the SARS outbreak of 2002 and 2003.
You just missed this in your inbox
Every other week our Premium Members received this exact study plus Rhonda's practical commentary and 8+ other hand-picked papers.
In this study, the authors examined the course of disease in a cohort of 77 individuals with confirmed COVID-19 admitted to Union Hospital, Tongii Medical College, Wuhan, China, between January 16th and February 20th 2020. The individuals evaluated in this study consisted of only moderate cases of COVID-19, as none of the patients required intensive care or oxygen supple-mentation or intubation. The researchers demonstrated a significantly different rate of viral clearance for each treatment group and notably, IFN-α2b treatment accelerated viral clearance by approximately 7 days. Treatment with IFN-α2b, whether alone or in combination with ARB, accelerated viral clearance when compared to ARB treatment alone. IFN treatment was also demonstrated to significantly reduce circulating levels of IL-6 and CRP, whether alone or in combination with ARB.
Despite the study’s limitations of a small, non-randomised cohort, the work provides several important and novel insights into COVID-19 disease, notably that treatment with IFN-α2b accelerated viral clearance from the upper respiratory tract and also reduced circulating inflammatory biomarkers, hinting at functional connections between viral infection and host end-organ damage by limiting the subsequent inflammatory response in the lungs of patients.
As an uncontrolled, exploratory study, Fish says a randomized clinical trial is a crucial next step: “A clinical trial with a larger cohort of infected patients that are randomized to treatment with interferon-alpha or to a placebo would further this research”.
In the meantime, the findings from this study are the first to suggest therapeutic efficacy of IFN-α2b as an available antiviral intervention for COVID-19, which may also benefit public health measures by shortening the duration of viral clearance and therefore slowing the tide of the pandemic."