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Researchers are testing an experimental drug to prevent sudden outbreaks. The trial may provide a new type of remedy for the virus.
By Gina Kolata
The coronavirus leaked at Heartland Health Care Center, a nursing home in Moline, Illinois, on the last day of July when a nurse tested positive.
It was a sign of being worried: the virus can spread in a nursing home in an instant. Other older people, who are in poor health and fragile and want normal practical care, are especially vulnerable. Staff who are concerned about citizens run the greatest threat of infection and unintentional spread of the virus.
Although elderly residents account for 1.2% of the U.S. population, they account for approximately 40% of Covid-19-related deaths.
But this time, the nursing home is not helpless. Heartland is the first facility to participate in a giant clinical trial of medicines that can protect citizens from infections in nursing homes and service homes.
Pharmaceutical corporations and the federal government avoid trying drugs on older adults, even if they are the ones who want to remedy them the most. Older adults can have a variety of confusing situations that make it difficult to tell if the drug is working, and retirement homes and long-term care services are governed by a number of complex privacy and access regulations.
Experts say the new research, through Eli Lilly and the National Institutes of Health, is among the first primary clinical trials involving citizens of nursing homes. And the scientists are delighted.
“These patients are so neglected,” said Dr. Rebecca Boxer, medical director of clinical trials at the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Research in Colorado. “They don’t have to use new, state-of-the-art drugs and trials.”
The experimental drug is a monoclonal antibody, an artificially synthesized edition of anti-coronavirus antibodies produced throughout the body. In this case, the antibody was “cloned” from those discovered in the blood of a Seattle man, one of the first patients in Covid-19, coronavirus disease.
Monoclonal antibodies are one of the wonderful hopes of the war against coronavirus. They are already used as a basis for effective remedies for arthritis, cancer, lupus and even Ebola. However, they are difficult to manufacture and expensive.
Despite the obstacles, two companies, Regeneron and Eli Lilly, continued their clinical trials. Nursing home testing is a must for Eli Lilly’s efforts to whether editing can prevent coronavirus.
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