Covid-19 study: inhaled multiple sclerosis drug ‘speeds up recovery’

A drug that coronavirus patients breathe lowers their risk of becoming seriously ill and speeds recovery, according to a large study in the second Covid breakthrough this week.

Only 13 percent of hospitalized Covid-19 patients who received SNG001 became ill enough to require intensive care, compared with 22 percent of those who received a placebo.

Patients treated with the drug were also twice as likely to recover after two weeks than those who didn’t, according to research from Southampton University.

SNG001 uses a naturally occurring protein called interferon beta that the body makes to fight viral infections.

Interferon beta is a treatment for multiple sclerosis and is usually given by injection. But SNG001 is inhaled into the lungs using a nebulizer to elicit a stronger, more targeted antiviral response.

Scientists believe Covid-19 shuts down the immune system’s ability to produce the protein in high doses, with the new treatment providing the lungs with an essential ‘replenishment’.

The breakthrough makes SNG001 just the second drug scientifically proven to treat the disease, the other being the £ 5 steroid dexamethasone.

Synairgen – the company that developed the new drug – has not disclosed how much the treatment will cost. But comparable treatments for MS on the NHS cost around £ 160 per patient for a month.

And it raises even more hope that an end to the pandemic could be in sight after initial results of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine showed it to be 90 percent effective.

It is hoped that Britain, with a vaccine, multiple drugs and rapid tests available to the UK, could soon end the ongoing opening and closing of society through draconian lockdowns.

The latest study, published in the journal Lancet Respiratory Medicine, looked at 98 hospital patients with the virus between March and May, at the height of the UK epidemic.

They were divided in two, with one group receiving the new treatment and the other group receiving a placebo.

The trial was conducted double-blind, meaning that neither the researchers nor the 98 patients knew who was receiving SNG001.

In the placebo group, 11 (22 percent) of the 50 patients were transferred to the ICU or required mechanical ventilation after fourteen days. Three eventually died.

Of those who received SNG001, only six (13 percent) of the 48 patients developed serious illness and there were no deaths.

Patients taking the drug were also twice as likely to regain full health by the end of the two-week period.

A total of 21 (44 percent) in the SNG001 group recovered during that time, compared to 11 (22 percent) patients in the placebo group.

Lead author Professor Tom Wilkinson, Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Southampton, said: “ The results confirm our belief that interferon beta, a widely known drug approved for use in its injectable form for other indications, may have the potential as an drug to restore the lung’s immune response and accelerate the recovery of Covid-19.

Inhaled interferon beta-1a produces high, local concentrations of the immune protein, which strengthens lung defenses instead of targeting specific viral mechanisms.

“This could have additional benefits in the treatment of Covid-19 infection when it occurs alongside infection by another respiratory virus, such as influenza or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which may occur in the winter months.”

The authors admitted that their study, while promising, had several limitations – most notably, its small sample size.

There were also differences between the two groups in recruitment – patients in the SNG001 group had more severe disease at baseline and more patients had high blood pressure.

While in the placebo group there were a higher number of patients with diabetes and heart disease.

Diabetes and heart disease are two conditions that can make Covid-19 more deadly, which may have skewed the results of the study.

Dr. Nathan Peiffer-Smadja, an expert in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Imperial College Londo, said larger studies should be able to address these limitations.

In response to the study, he said: ‘The number of patients participating in this clinical pilot trial is of course small.

In addition, this study did not show any impact of the evaluated treatment on time to discharge nor on mortality, although the study clearly lacked the strength to answer the latter question.

“Therefore, larger randomized clinical trials are needed to confirm these results.”

He also added that the safety of inhaling interferon beta-1a using a nebuliser “will be of particular concern as interferon nebulization does not yet require marketing authorization for any indication”.

Further studies are being conducted by the University of Southampton to see if SNG001 is given to Covid-19 patients before being hospitalized.

If this turns out to be the case, this opens the door for patients to be able to treat themselves at home with a special inhaler.

Synairgen – the company that developed SNG001 – will now have to present its findings to medical regulators around the world before it is approved.

Health heads will review the findings and decide whether to approve the treatment so doctors can treat Covid-19 patients with it.

The company’s CEO, Richard Marsden, said in July that it would be able to give a ‘few hundred thousand’ doses every month at any given time during the winter.

Due to the scale of the study, the study may need to be scaled up before approval is obtained.

This process could take months, although governments around the world may be open to accelerating the drug tracking if they are impressed with the findings.

Only one drug, the £ 5 steroid dexamethasone, has been conclusively proven to treat the coronavirus so far.

The Recovery study found it reduced the risk of death by 35 percent for patients on ventilators – the most dangerously ill – and by a fifth for all patients who needed oxygen at any time.