Science

Eugene

(61,914 posts) Wed Jul 8, 2020, 08:23 PM Jul 2020

'Desperation science' slows the hunt for coronavirus drugs

Source: Associated Press

‘Desperation science’ slows the hunt for coronavirus drugs

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
July 7, 2020

Desperate to solve the deadly conundrum of COVID-19, the world is clamoring for fast answers and solutions from a research system not built for haste.

The ironic, and perhaps tragic, result: Scientific shortcuts have slowed understanding of the disease and delayed the ability to find out which drugs help, hurt or have no effect at all.

As deaths from the coronavirus relentlessly mounted into the hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of doctors and patients rushed to use drugs before they could be proved safe or effective. A slew of low-quality studies clouded the picture even more.

“People had an epidemic in front of them and were not prepared to wait,” said Dr. Derek Angus, critical care chief at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “We made traditional clinical research look so slow and cumbersome.”

It wasn’t until mid-June — nearly six months in — when the first evidence came that a drug could improve survival. Researchers in the United Kingdom managed to enroll one of every six hospitalized COVID-19 patients into a large study that found a cheap steroid called dexamethasone helps and that a widely used malaria drug does not. The study changed practice overnight, even though results had not been published or reviewed by other scientists.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/db08697f6260038f196b1106fe574228

1 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

'Desperation science' slows the hunt for coronavirus drugs (Original Post) Eugene Jul 2020 OP

Sometimes, this works out Warpy Jul 2020 #1

Warpy

(111,292 posts)

1. Sometimes, this works out

Reply to Eugene (Original post)

Wed Jul 8, 2020, 09:52 PM

Jul 2020

During the worst of the HIV epidemic, all we could do was try to keep them clean and as comfortable as possible while the inevitable happened, often within hours. When bags of unknown substances started to show up, identified with a bunch of letters and numbers, the patients started to live long enough to get out of the hospital and tie up loose ends and say their goodbyes. Things had been so desperate that the FDA had bypassed double blind studies for investigational drugs that had shown promise. There was no way to do ethical double blind studies anyway since there was no standard treatment to give anyone, except a clean bed and a funeral.

Desperation during a deadly novel virus outbreak is pretty much standard procedure. Some drugs will not pan out when widely used. Others just might. When you're looking at a person who will undoubtedly die if you don't try something, the ethical concerns about a small study group tend to evaporate.

This would be very bad science if we had a standard treatment that worked and were looking for treatments that worked better. That isn't the case.

Reply to this discussion