President Trump given experimental antibody cocktail

The experimental antibody cocktail given to President Trump to help battle his coronavirus — called REGN-COV2 — just this week showed promise.

“Regeneron’s antibody cocktail REGN-COV2 rapidly reduced viral load and associated symptoms in infected COVID-19 patients,” said Dr. George D. Yancopoulos, president and chief scientific officer of Regeneron.

The Tarrytown, N.Y., biotech company reported Tuesday that results of a double-blind trial showed “reduced viral load and the time to alleviate symptoms in non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19.”

That cocktail, Trump’s doctor Sean Conley said in a memo, was given to the president before he left the White House for nearby Walter Reed hospital Friday evening. The president is also taking vitamin D; famotidine, which is typically used to treat heartburn and acid reflux; the sleep aid melatonin; and an aspirin.

The biotech company said recovery times in some test patients were six to eight days, a report on the trial states.

“There were no deaths in the trial,” Regeneron reported.

But not everyone agrees the cocktail is safe, yet.

“This has shown not to work in clinical trails,” said Dr. Jeremy Faust, ER physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We shouldn’t be treating the president as a guinea pig and experimenting on him. … I’m worried this reflects their desperation. That they are worried he’s dying, or something. Which may not be the case, I hope not.”

He added the cocktail has side effects. Plus, he added on Twitter, others may want the same treatment.

Until a successful vaccine is rolled out, antibody testing is gaining a lot of buzz.

Antibodies are proteins produced by someone’s immune system and may guard against the same virus the next time they are exposed. But the testing is still in the early stages — like so much else associated with COVID-19.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2GqLFeV