Coronavirus treatment reduces number of intensive care patients in clinical trial, biotech firm says


The British biotech firm Synairgen is flaunting not-yet-released clinical trial results that the company says suggest a new coronavirus treatment could reduce the number of intensive care patients, the BBC reports.
The trial results, which the BBC was not able to independently confirm, reportedly indicated that treating hospitalized patients with a protein called interferon beta cut the odds of those patients developing severe forms of COVID-19 by 79 percent, significantly reduced breathlessness, and shrunk the average hospitalization time from nine to six days.
The new drug is a special formulation of interferon beta — a viral defense mechanism that coronavirus seemingly suppresses to evade the body's immune system — delivered to the airways by a nebulizer which turns the protein into an aerosol. The hope is that the direct dose can boost an antiviral response, even in patients with weaker immune systems, BBC notes.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
While Synairgen is enthusiastic about the drug and plans to present its findings to medical regulators around the world in the next few days, other scientists told BBC they're reserving judgment until they see full results of the small trial, indicating that releasing the preliminary data was premature on Synairgen's part. Read more at BBC.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
-
Tea app hack: user data stolen from women's dating safety app
In The Spotlight Data leak has led to fears users could be targeted by men angered by the app's premise
-
The Assassin: action-packed caper is 'terrific fun'
The Week Recommends Keeley Hawes stars as a former hitwoman drawn out of retirement for 'one last job'
-
The EPA wants to green-light approval for a twice-banned herbicide
Under the radar Dicamba has been found to harm ecosystems
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestone
Speed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two years
Speed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on X
Speed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'
Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
-
Amazon launches 1st Kuiper internet satellites
Speed Read The battle of billionaires continues in space
-
Test flight of orbital rocket from Europe explodes
Speed Read Isar Aerospace conducted the first test flight of the Spectrum orbital rocket, which crashed after takeoff
-
Apple pledges $500B in US spending over 4 years
Speed Read This is a win for Trump, who has pushed to move manufacturing back to the US
-
Microsoft unveils quantum computing breakthrough
Speed Read Researchers say this advance could lead to faster and more powerful computers