Nature's latest report: more than 80 clinical trials test anti new coronavirus therapy

Authors: the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) epidemic is continuing But according to the National Health Committee data, 79 new confirmed cases were found in Hubei except for the early hours yesterday, and the situation was on the fourteenth consecutive day At the same time, a variety of research and clinical trials on covid-19 are under intense development all over the world In the data released by the China clinical trial registration center, new drugs are also listed with traditional therapies with a history of thousands of years, and the number is increasing every day No effective treatment has been identified, and doctors are eager to help patients with covid-19, but scientists warn that only careful trials can determine which treatments work Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organization (who), said his team has been evaluating many clinical trials in China and has drafted a clinical trial plan that can be carried out simultaneously by clinicians from all over the world These efforts would be futile if the Chinese trials (up to 600 participants in each trial) were not designed with strict criteria for study parameters, such as the control group, randomization and measurement of clinical outcomes As a result, who has worked with Chinese scientists to set standards from the very beginning For example, the recovery or decline phase of an individual should be measured in the same way, regardless of the treatment received "We want to bring standardization into the process," Swaminathan explained Who's clinical trials are designed to be flexible, allowing researchers around the world to aggregate their results over time, and will compare two or three therapies supported by scientific evidence, including an HIV drug combination lopinavir and ritonavir and an experimental antiviral drug, remdesivir "Making clinical trials work is our first priority because if we can get information about what works and what doesn't, we can immediately benefit our patients," Swaminathan said At present, China has begun to test the drugs included in the who master plan The China clinical trials registry, a database of biomedical research in China, lists these surveys in dozens of other controlled trials of existing therapies, experimental procedures, and traditional drugs These treatments have different amounts of evidence to support their effectiveness Two AIDS drugs can block the enzymes needed for virus replication In animal studies, the drug reduced levels of the coronaviruses that cause SARS and mers Radcivir is a nucleotide analogue produced by Gilead science company in the United States It has also achieved some success in anti animal coronavirus In January, researchers reported that a patient in the United States recovered from covid-19 infection after receiving radcivir treatment In the first week of February, China launched two placebo-controlled trials of ridcivir, involving 760 patients with covid-19 Jiang Shibo, a virologist at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the studies should be completed by the end of April, and radcivir could be approved by the Chinese government as early as may But by that time, the epidemic may have passed China's Ministry of science and technology said yesterday that chloroquine phosphate can be clearly used to treat covid-19, and has launched several trials of chloroquine phosphate Chloroquine phosphate is an old drug which has been on the market for many years The safety of chloroquine phosphate in the treatment of a wide range of people is controllable It can kill novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in cell culture Researchers are also looking at whether steroids can reduce inflammation in severe patients with covid-19, or whether they can cause harm "We are looking forward to seeing the results of these trials," said yazdan yazdanpanah, an epidemiologist at INSERM, the French national health service "If the epidemic continues to spread, clinical researchers around the world will need this information." Another 300 person controlled trial will test the serum of those who are cured by covid-19 In the past few decades, this strategy based on the accumulation of antiviral antibodies has proved that it can help the newly infected people to fight against the virus quickly, and has achieved some success in the treatment of other viruses Two stem cell tests are also on the books In one study, a team from the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University injected 28 patients with PBSCs and compared them with those who did not receive them So far, there is little evidence that stem cells can clear away coronavirus infection Swaminathan said the who had no control over the researchers' work, but said that the who issued ethical guidance on conducting trials during the 2016 outbreak in Brazil and would soon issue a shorter, more understandable report on the outbreak Of the 15 trials listed by the China clinical trial registry, more than 2000 people are expected to participate in the research of various traditional Chinese medicines One of the biggest trials was the evaluation of "Shuanghuanglian", a Chinese herbal medicine containing Forsythia Extract that is said to have been used to treat infections for more than 2000 years The trial involved 400 participants, including a control group who received standard care but did not receive placebo treatment Who is working with Chinese scientists to standardize the design of all studies, including those on traditional Chinese medicines The efforts stem from a controversial initiative last year, the WHO, which endorsed traditional Chinese medicine in its disease outline Critics say who approval is endorsement, but Swaminathan disagrees She said the WHO initiative helped the organization compile medical terminology so that herbal therapies could be evaluated as rigorously as drug tests "We want to test traditional medicine in a scientific way," she said As these trials begin, researchers are looking for new drugs that can fight a variety of coronaviruses, including those that have not yet surfaced Spike protein on the surface of SARS, mers and covid-19 virus is a promising target Professor Jiang and other research teams have found compounds and antibodies that bind to spines, which prevent coronaviruses from invading human cells But Emily erbelding, a microbiologist at the National Institutes of health, warns that such research is still in its early stages and that the compounds need to be developed into drugs and tested in animals To promote covid-19 research, NIH announced an "emergency reward" grant in early February "Because there are many possibilities for treatment, but time is limited, with the progress of the trial, who should provide advice on which research should continue and which should be abandoned," Jiang said He hopes to continue to study better and more extensive treatments after the outbreak He added: "I'm afraid it's going to be the same as SARS It's going to end in nothing." 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