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124 active trials for Coronavirus Infection

Convalescent Antibodies Infusion in Critically Ill COVID 19 Patients

The 2019 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 or COVID 19), which originated in Wuhan, China, has become a major concern all over the world. Convalescent plasma or immunoglobulins have been used as a last resort to improve the survival rate of patients with SARS whose condition continued to deteriorate despite any attempted treatment.. Moreover, several studies showed a shorter hospital stay and lower mortality in patients treated with convalescent plasma than those who were not treated with convalescent plasma. Evidence shows that convalescent plasma from patients who have recovered from viral infections can be used effectively as a treatment of patients with active disease. The use of solutions enriched of antiviral antibodies has several important advantages over the convalescent plasma including the high level of neutralizing antibodies supplied. Plasma-exchange is expensive and requires large volumes of substitution fluid. Albumin is better tolerated and less expensive, but exchanges using albumin solutions increase the risk of bleeding because of progressive coagulation factor depletion. With either albumin or fresh frozen plasma, increasing the risk of cardiovascular instability in the plasma donor and in the recipient, which can be detrimental in a critically ill patient with COVID 19 pneumonia. The aforementioned limitations of plasma therapy can be overcome by using selective apheresis methods, such as double-filtration plasmapheresis (DFPP).DFPP is a modality of plasma purification that performs an initial plasma separation from blood, and the subsequent separation of specific molecules, on the basis of their specific molecular weight (cut-off), by using a fractionation filter. The Fractionation Filter 2A20, because of its membrane sieving cut-off, retains larger molecules and returns plasma along with smaller molecules to the circulation, including the major part of the albumin. The selection of the membrane 2A20 is related to the appropriate Sieving Coefficient for IgG that allows to efficiently collect antibodies from patients which are recovered from COVID-19, with negligible fluid losses and limited removal of albumin. The total amount of antibodies obtained during one DFPP session exceeds by three to four times the total amount provided to recipients with one unit of plasma obtained during one plasma-exchange session from one COVID-19 convalescent donor. This should result in more effective viral inhibition and larger benefit for the patient achieved with one unit of enriched immunoglobulin solution obtained with DFPP than with one unit of plasma obtained with plasma exchange. These observations provide the background for a pilot study aimed to explore whether the infusion of antibodies obtained with one single DFPP procedure from voluntary convalescent donors could offer an effective and safe therapeutic option for critically ill patients with severe coronavirus (COVID-19) pneumonia requiring mechanical ventilation.

Start: April 2020
Blood Biomarkers as Predictors of COVID-19 Disease Progression in Recently Infected Kidney Transplant Patients

SARS-CoV-2 induces over-production of inflammatory cytokines, and especially interleukin-6 (IL-6). The apparently strong association between blood levels of inflammaory cytokines and SARS-CoV-2 disease severity has led clinicians to evaluate the administration of steroids or anti-IL-6 antagonists in severely ill patients. As of this day, biomarkers capable of predicting clinical disease progression in Covid-19 patients with mild-to-moderate symptoms have not yet been formally identified. Identifying such markers and evaluating their predictive value may be exploited to guide patient care management, and as such forms the core objective of this proposal. Because of strong inter-individual variations in the ability of innate immune cells to produce cytokines, the hypothesis formulate and intend to test is that innate IL-6 responsiveness varies between recently infected Covid-19 patients and could predict disease outcome. To test this hypothesis, the investigator propose to follow recently infected kidney transplant patients with moderate Covid-19 symptoms. These patients stand a higher risk to progress to severe disease. The staff plan to collect a blood sample in these patients using a system whereby ex vivo cytokine production is initiated in the very same blood collection tube without prior separation and centrifugation, thus reducing labour and operator bias. After incubation with or without known innate immune stimuli, the cell-free phase from each collection-culture tube will be assayed for IL-6 content. Associations between IL-6 content and disease outcome (encephalopathy, transfer to acute care or death) will be determined in 115 Covid-19 kidney transplant patients with moderate symptoms followed in 9 centers.

Start: April 2020
Study of Ruxolitinib Plus Simvastatin in the Prevention and Treatment of Respiratory Failure of COVID-19.

COVID-19's mechanism to enter the cell is initiated by its interaction with its cellular receptor, the angiotensin-converting enzyme. As a result of this union, a clathrin-mediated endocytosis process begins. This route is one of the therapeutic targets for which available drugs are being investigated in order to treat COVID-19 infection. This is one of the mechanisms blocked by drugs like ruxolitinib and chloroquine. Various drugs approved for clinical use that block the clathrin-mediated endocytosis pathway have been explored. It has been found that the best in vitro and in vivo results were obtained with statins, which also allowed generating a greater potent adaptive immune response. Therefore, statins and specifically simvastatin make it possible to block the entry process used by COVID-19, block inflammation by various mechanisms and increase the adaptive immune response. All of these processes are desirable in patients infected with COVID-19. Statins have been proposed to have beneficial effects in patients infected with MERS-COV, another coronavirus similar to COVID-19, but there have been no randomized studies supporting the use of statins in patients with COVID-19 infection. In this project we propose the combined use of one of these drugs, ruxolitinib with simvastatin, looking for a synergistic effect in the inhibition of viral entry and in the anti-inflammatory effect.

Start: April 2020