COVID19 Update - Day 194

US Tests: 92,069,997*

US Cases: 6,770,401*

US Deaths: 191,627*

Worldwide Cases: 30,911,999*

Worldwide Deaths: 959,059*

* - Numbers are a lower bound.  True numbers are being suppressed by the Trump administration

And now for something completely different.  Rather than focusing on how badly Trump in particular, and America in general, is responding to the pandemic, here's an article about a possible treatment which could lessen the severity of some of the worst coronavirus symptoms:

After finding the potential role of bradykinins in severe Covid-19 in March, Roche went looking for a way to halt this inflammatory cascade. “It’s like a set of gear wheels—inflammation, injury, inflammation—and you’re trying to jam up the wheels,” he says. Along with his wife, Renuka Roche, an assistant professor in occupational therapy at Eastern Michigan University, he started to explore potential treatments that were ready to use.

As clinicians trained to pay a lot of attention to recovery through rehabilitation, he says, “We know that health care does not end with just saving a person’s life.” Roche says life quality is important too, meaning any intervention that could minimize damage would be a true advancement in the fight against Covid-19’s ravages.

Treatment targeting bradykinin signaling wouldn’t have to be perfect to improve lung damage and long-term outcomes. “If you’re able to even dampen the cycle by 50 percent, that means that much tissue may be spared,” Roche says.

In the medical literature, the Roches found a medication called icatibant that is both known to be safe and inhibits bradykinin signaling. It was already approved by the FDA, with the added benefit of an expired patent, meaning generic versions could be made much more affordably. They reached out to the Canadian and Indian governments about starting rapid research on icatibant in late March, wrote an open letter to the scientific community in April, and published a paper on their hypothesis in May.

 Certainly much more promising than a complete shot in the dark, like hydroxychloroquine.