Covid-19, Bariticinib the new weapon against serious disease
The lethality of Covid, compared to a year ago, has been reduced by 20 times, approximately 0.15%. And this primarily thanks to discovery of vaccines and mass vaccination (especially in “rich” countries) and secondly to development of more effective treatments against the virus. It can be reasonably said that humanity is now much more protected and the production of new treatments and medicines continues unabated. But there are not only new drugs but the research also moves on drugs already tested and effective on other diseases that now turn out to be useful also for the Coronavirus. It is the case of baricitinib, an anti-inflammatory normally used in rheumatoid arthritis. A clinical study involving over 8000 patients in the UK has shown that Baricitinib reduces the mortality of patients with severe Covid by 13%. Together with the previous studies it is thus possible to state that a reduction in mortality of 20% is achieved.
Covid-19, Bariticinib fourth life-saving drug
Baricitinib is the fourth life-saving treatment, as demonstrated in the largest trial in the world (Recovery) made on nearly 50,000 volunteers from the University of Oxford. The study showed that, as early as 2020, dexamethasone, a low-cost 1957 anti-inflammatory drug, reduced the risk of death in the most seriously ill patients by a third. In 2021, the trial showed that mortality decreased until 50% if Tocilizumab was added to Dexamethasone, a modern rheumatoid arthritis drug. For this drug the price was around 1000 euros. The third useful treatment is instead an expensive cocktail of foreign antibodies, Ronapreve, developed by the US company Regeneron and known in the United States as Regen-cov. All of these treatments have greatly reduced the risk of death from Covid-19.
Covid-19, a cocktail of drugs against the disease
The study also clarified how the disease was treated. 95% of the 8,000 patients received dexamethasone and 23%, also Tocilizumab. And 20%, Remdesivir, an antiviral that has also shown efficacy in other studies. The Oxford researchers left half of the patients on their standard treatment and the other half also took Baricitinib. Mortality dropped from 14% to 12%, a reduction of two percentage points. Taken together, these treatments are reducing the risk of death for these patients by more than half. Bariticinib is expected to cost € 300 per patient. Coronavirus multiplies in cells and can trigger one cytokine storm, an overreaction of the human body’s defenses. This inflammatory response can cause multiple organ failure and patient death. That’s why three of the four treatments in the Oxford study are anti-inflammatory. The World Health Organization had recommended Baricitinib as early as January 2022.