Cell Therapy News/Articles, page-6493

Obviously a critical factor affecting the progression of the MSB’s ARDS trial is mortality in the placebo group, and of course, the impact of any recent improvements in standard of care.

I’ve searched far and wide for recent U.S. data, looking for confirmation of the contention that it continues at 60+%. No success unfortunately.

In it’s absence I’ll go with the best I could find from Europe.

A very large UK study of Covid-19 patients was published yesterday.

The researchers used data collected from 35,463 patients admitted to hospital between February and May this year to develop a “Covid-19 risk identification tool”. This involved using clinical information and tests at admission, to group patients into one of 4 categories based on risk of death; low, intermediate, high or very high.

The aim was to use the groupings to help clinical staff choose the best course of treatment for patients admitted to hospital. (eg. low risk might be treated at home)

Once developed, the tool was then tested, and found to be accurate, in a confirmatory group of a further 22,361 patients from the end of May to the end of June.

“One in every hundred patients in the low risk group was found to be at risk of dying. It was 10 in every hundred in the intermediate-risk group, 31 in a hundred in the high-risk group and 62 in a hundred in the very-high risk group”.

Note the words, “at risk of dying”, not necessarily mortality.

Actual mortality in the entire original 35,463 group was 32.2%, and 30.1% in the more recent 22,361 confirmatory dataset.

But importantly, of the 4158 patients predicted by their 'Covid-19 risk identification tool' score to be at highest risk, mortality was 62%.

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3339

Herro