While there is hope that a “sophisticated new drug treatment to prevent people from getting severely ill from COVID-19” will be available in the fall, experts says treatments most likely to be available with be repurposed therapeutic drugs meant to treat late-stage symptoms.
Richard Boucher, MD, the James C. Moeser Eminent Professor of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine and director of the Marsico Lung Institute, explained to the News and Observer why he believes some repurposed drugs currently under consideration to treat COVID-19 patients could work.
“The lung only fails in so many different ways, and it doesn’t matter if it’s SARS CoV-2, or influenza, or metapneumovirus,” said Boucher. “It’s going to be therapies that are going to be useful, but are going to be incremental.”
The article also recognized Boucher’s major study on how the coronavirus primarily infects the respiratory tract through the nose — a critical finding in the search for therapeutics.
He added that treatments attempting to mobilize the power of the immune system are proving far more complicated to achieve.
“There’s no question that antivirals would be better if you can get them in early…But the second half of the disease, which is immune mediated, is going to be complex. It’s a delicate balance. I mean, we’re on a knife’s edge all the time immunologically.”
Read the entire article in the News and Observer.