I am not an expert on the legalities of clinical trials or experimental medicines but when you have Prof Gerard Curley from the RCSI stating “There is a critical need for new therapies to treat sepsis, which is a
devastating condition that can affect people at any stage of life without warning. These exciting
results give us grounds for optimism that Cymerus MSCs could provide a new treatment option
for these patients.” before the COVID-19 pandemic surely that critical need has now been multiplied.
We have already passed the safety hurdle and at the moment, no effective treatment protocol is available, making our MSC's available to people with no hope is the humane thing to do. Whilst I am not going to pester Dr McDonald I sincerely hope that he is in contact with the Federal Government about fast tracking Cymerus into the hospital system.
These are the key highlights from the ASX announcement on the 5th December 2019:
Key Highlights
• In a preclinical model of severe pneumonia-induced sepsis, Cymerus MSC treatment:
o Increased blood oxygen levels
o Increased lung compliance (the ability of lungs to stretch and expand)
o Decreased alveolar neutrophil infiltration (which can lead to lung injury)
o Decreased barrier permeability (which allows harmful proteins into the lungs)
o Decreased inflammation
• The extent of each of the above benefits was statistically significant in comparison to a
placebo control.
• Positive trends were also observed in a preclinical model of mild pneumonia-induced
sepsis.
• Cymerus MSCs were also shown to enhance phagocytosis, both directly and indirectly.
Phagocytosis is the process by which white blood cells ingest and remove bacteria and
other harmful agents from the body.
This article is from ninemsn: https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-risk-of-death-age-sepsis-blooding-clotting-key-factors/432eabb2-35b6-4a5b-8e60-aa9ae1bc736f
New studies of patients in the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic are providing fresh insights into what is making the disease so infectious and so deadly - and who is most at risk. One study published in The Lancet on Wednesday found that being older, showing signs of sepsis and having blood clotting issues when admitted to hospital are key risk factors for those that died. Sepsis occurs when the body's immune response goes into overdrive in response to an infection, triggering inflammation and, potentially, organ failure and death.
The study looked at the outcomes for 191 patients who were hospitalised with coronavirus in Wuhan, China, during the early stage of the outbreak, two-thirds of whom had severe disease.
More than a quarter of patients studied died: 28 per cent or 54 people.
Two-thirds of those who died had a pre-existing condition, with hypertension being the most common (48 per cent), followed by diabetes (31 per cent), heart disease (24 per cent) and chronic obstructive lung disease (seven per cent).
"Poorer outcomes in older people may be due, in part, to the age-related weakening of the immune system and increased inflammation that could promote viral replication and more prolonged responses to inflammation, causing lasting damage to the heart, brain, and other organs," co-author Dr Zhibo Liu from Jinyintan Hospital told Science Daily. Symptoms such as fever lasted for an average of 12 days, but almost half still had a persistent cough when they left hospital.
Another study published earlier this week by researchers from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States analysed when and how the disease spreads. There have been conflicting messages from health authorities on how long people can carry the virus before showing symptoms and when they become contagious, leaving question marks over whether 14-day quarantines being used around the world are enough.
The new research found that a 14-day quarantine period should be sufficient to detect infection in 99 per cent of cases.
The average time from when a person exposed to coronavirus developed symptoms in the 181 patients studied was 5.1 days.
Symptoms were detected within 11.5 days in 97.5 per cent of cases."Based on our analysis of publicly available data, the current recommendation of 14 days for active monitoring or quarantine is reasonable, although with that period some cases would be missed over the long-term," the study's senior author Justin Lessler, an associate professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Epidemiology, said.
The Lancet study also raised questions around how long those with coronavirus need to be contained, with one patient found to have traces of the virus in their symptom for over a month (37 days) from first becoming unwell.
The average time taken for the virus to completely leave the patients' system was 20 days.
However, co-lead author Professor Bin Cao from the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Capital Medical University, China, cautioned that the severity of the disease would play a role in this, and most of those studied were in a severe or critical condition.
This is from the link in the Lancet:
SOFA score is a good diagnostic marker for sepsis and septic shock, and reflects the state and degree of multi-organ dysfunction., Although bacterial infections are usually regarded as a leading cause of sepsis, viral infection can also cause sepsis syndrome. Previously, we determined that sepsis occurred in nearly 40% of adults with community-acquired pneumonia due to viral infection. In the current study, we found that more than half of patients developed sepsis. Additionally, we found that more than 70% of patients had white blood cell count below 10·0 × 109 per L or procalcitonin below 0·25 ng/mL, and no bacterial pathogens were detected in these patients on admission. Sepsis was a common complication, which might be directly caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, but further research is needed to investigate the pathogenesis of sepsis in COVID-19 illness.
