Have they found a cure for the coronavirus? Australian researchers claim two existing drugs could ‘cure’ COVID-19 after patients they tested responded ‘very well’ to treatment.
According to scientists in Australia, some of the drugs used to treat HIV and Malaria could be used to tackle the coronavirus.
The University of Queensland in Brisbane has a team of infectious disease experts who say they have seen two existing medications manage to wipe out COVID-19 infections.
One of them is Chloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, and HIV-suppressing combination lopinavir/ritonavir have both reportedly shown promising results in human tests. This has made the virus ‘disappear’ in infected patients.
Right now the drugs are being tested as doctors and researchers around the world try to find a vaccine, cure or treatment for the deadly coronavirus.
Over 170,000 people across the globe have been infected. 6,500 of them have died from it.
China managed to get a handle of the outbreak by basically shutting down. Other countries weren’t so quick. Almost 25,000 people in Italy now have it, around 14,000 people in Iran, Spain has 8,000 and more than 5,000 people in both Germany and France. The United States of America currently has 3,774 people infected.
Professor Paterson said these could possibly be considered a possible ‘treatment or cure’ for the deadly respiratory infection.
When the HIV medication lopinavir/ritonavir was given to some people infected in Australia it led to the ‘disappearance of the virus’.
He told news.com.au : “It’s a potentially effective treatment. Patients would end up with no viable coronavirus in their system at all after the end of the therapy.”
While the treatment has been effective in a few of the cases, there hasn’t been any controlled testing like what they need to test a new drug. The first set of Chinese patients that were in Australia all did very well when treated with the HIV drug, according to Professor Paterson.
“What we want to do at the moment is a large clinical trial across Australia, looking at 50 hospitals, and what we’re going to compare is one drug, versus another drug, versus the combination of the two drugs”
-Professor Paterson.
3 people have died in Australia and around 300 confirmed cases are there.
Lopinavir/ritonavir, the anti-HIV drug being tested, is most commonly sold under the name Kaletra.
It is an antiviral medication that can be taken twice daily by people infected with HIV, reducing levels of the virus circulating the body.
The regular use of this meditation is intended to stop HIV from progressing into AIDS, which is fatal. It may also reduce the risk of people transmitting the infection to others.
It’s known as a protease inhibitor, which stops viruses from using an enzyme called protease, which is vital for them to be able to spread.
Without the protease, a virus cannot make the fully-matured clones that are needed in order to infect other healthy cells, which means the infection can’t spread.
The ability of this stopping a virus from reproducing and infecting new cells is believe to make Kaletra an effective coronavirus treatment.