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ignoramous·

The drugs on trial are:

1. Remdesivir (Ebola drug).

2. Chroloquine and Hydroxychroloquine (Malaria drug).

3. Ritonavir/lopinavir (AIDS drug).

4. Ritonavir/lopinavir + interferon beta (virus signaling protein).

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Interesting to see interferon on here. I remember it being hailed as some sort of wonder drug back in the 80s, but then sort of fell off the radar.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=interferon

Covid disables the innate immune response by preventing the expression of interferon alpha & beta.

This allows it to engage in uncontrolled replication for up to two weeks before the adaptive response brings it under control.

This massive viral load greatly contributes to transmission.

(Or at least SARS does this.)

https://cmr.asm.org/content/20/4/660.long

The side effects are awful.

I really thought Camostat mesilate was going to be looked at

I don't even want to know what role lobbyists play in selecting the drugs used for the trial.

Probably not a lot. Most of these are out of patent.

I guarantee you that Gilead has at least considered filing a patent application on a new use of the old compound. And they will probably get a grant. Same for all the other treatments.

Clearly if they played a big role they did a terrible job with how many of these drugs are off patent.

I think it is only approved for treatment in Japan

But it has been around for at least 20 years. The safety profile is extremely well known.

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