Can interferons stop COVID-19 before it takes hold?

On 30 April, Valerie McCarthy's test result confirmed that her grinding fatigue and pummeling headaches were caused by the new coronavirus. She wasn't hospitalized, but the very next day, a nurse at Stanford University Medical Center gave the 52-year-old marathon runner an injection that contained either a placebo or a natural virus fighter: interferon.

McCarthy was Patient 16 in a clinical trial that, it's hoped, will help fill a huge void in treatments for COVID-19: Doctors have no drugs that, given early, have been proven to prevent infection or help beat back the virus before it takes hold. So far, the two scientifically validated treatments for COVID-19—remdesivir and dexamethasone—have only been shown to work in hospitalized patients with serious illness.

But a small flurry of recent papers suggests the novel coronavirus does some of its deadly work by disabling interferons, powerful proteins that are the body's own frontline defenders against viral invasion. If so, synthetic interferons given before or soon after infection may tame the virus before it causes serious disease—a welcome possibility that additional recent studies support.


https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6500/125?utm_campaign=buffer&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com

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