This experimental treatment, whose medical name is apheresis, consists of drawing blood from the frame and “taking it out”. Essentially, when blood is temporarily centrifuged in a centrifuge, it is separated into layers. Then you can clean express parts or remove certain layers and update them with more desirable fluids. The blood is then returned to the frame through a vein.
Apheresis may be effective for certain situations, such as sickle cell anemia, in which red blood cells can be removed, and leukemia, in which the patient will have their white blood cells removed and even white blood cells removed from a healthy donor. .
Thousands of other people suffering from the debilitating symptoms of prolonged COVID are traveling to seek wanted but unproven remedies, such as “blood washing. “@madlendavies reported in this research through BMJ and ITV Newshttps://t. co/ZjNe7h3zIF
As a remedy for prolonged COVID, apheresis is proposed to remove circulating spots in the blood that are linked to inflammation and clotting. Its efficacy has not yet been demonstrated in a significant trial in this context and is not without risks. it attracts a lot of attention, especially thanks to social networks.
But who can blame long-standing COVID patients for seeking experimental and unproven remedies?We have not been able to fully delineate the spectrum of diseases that contribute to prolonged COVID. Most disappointingly, we have failed to initiate smart-quality trials of possible long-term remedies for COVID. There is an empty area globally where there is a massive coordinated effort.
A public crisis is emerging
As we perceive the medium- and long-term fitness issues that many other people face after a COVID-19 infection, it’s like watching a twist of automotive destiny spread in slow motion.
In the medium term, there is a modest but genuine accumulation of blood clots (these are microcoacles but general clots visible in classic images). as diabetes are no more unusual in patients who have recovered from the virus.
In the first year of the pandemic, more than one in 4 hospital survivors had died or returned to the hospital within the first few months of discharge. While vaccines probably helped, we don’t yet know if this replaced them in more recent waves. If those trends continue, fitness facilities face a double whammy from patients requiring care for their initial infection and then from those patients’ ongoing and meaningful desires for physical care.
All this even before we have taken on the challenge of facing the long COVID. We do not have a transparent concept of the number of other people affected, in part due to the lack of standardized definitions and diagnostic criteria. Lately it cannot be underestimated.
Today, patients are taking desperate steps in hopes of seeing an improvement in their chronic symptoms. Apheresis is not the first panacea, and it will not be the last.
we want trials
Many of the leading proponents of unproven remedies like apheresis will tell you that we just want to start treating COVID patients in the long term; that there is no time to conduct clinical trials, and that trials are not mandatory anyway because anecdotal evidence is powerful. I heard this same argument about COVID-19 remedies, made by the same people, at the beginning of the first wave.
This turned out to be the approach. Treatments presented as promising at first, such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, later proved ineffective. Meanwhile, therapies such as dexamethasone and tocilizumab have been shown to save lives in rigorous trials and have replaced the course of the pandemic.
In both vaccines and antiviral treatments, we have shown that we can conduct large-scale trials at the speed of the pandemic. But, for now, we’re applying those classes to prolonged COVID.
My colleagues and I organized the HEAL-COVID study, which recruited more than 1000 people hospitalized for COVID-19. Our goal is to identify imaginable remedies that can improve long-term outcomes for those patients and, ideally, prevent them from starting chronic physical conditions.
However, as we move further down the road and take a look at the long-established COVID, studies in terms of treatment are currently scarce. There are exceptions such as the STIMULATE-ICP network treatment study, but they are prominent because they stand out from a less crowded field.
In this lack of evidence, a mix of wayward evangelists, other well-meaning people who only seek to offer hope and help, and the worst kind of charlatans who prey on the sick and vulnerable. put on the calendar the requirement for definitive, large-scale and well-funded clinical trials.
If we can do this at the height of a pandemic a few weeks in advance, why is it another one now?they. But this complexity is not insurmountable.
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