This disease, COVID19 is a nasty one. While many see no ill effects at all, it turns out there are somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of infected people need hospitalization and a certain portion of those will need to be in the Intensive Care Unit.

This disease has no cure. We do not have a vaccine against it. We do not have a pill that can stop the virus from replicating. So we are stuck to supporting a person while they are ill and doing what we can to breathe for them until their immune system can fight off the virus.

Some people are not so lucky, and in spite of whatever modern medicine will do their system is overwhelmed and they will die.

But this means people will come up with treatments and cures and try to convince you that they are all great. So today we will talk about those cures and bust a few myths.

Chinese Traditional Medicine

Many things are used in Chinese medicine, some endangered

Of course someone came on my Facebook site who said they would send me some herbs/etc that were traditional Chinese medicine and would cure COVID19. They even had the audacity to say that they were responsible for WuHan now being free from this.

Does it work? No – it doesn’t. It does turn out that 85% of the patients in China tried some form of traditional Chinese Medicine. There is no uniform medicine they have for this virus. And since it is unregulated, you have no idea if you are getting what they tell you, or if you are getting something else.

Why? Well this is a novel virus, meaning human beings have never seen this – so why would any “traditional” medicine help something that is new? It cannot. Of course they don’t know about a virus, or what it does or how it infects things.

Vitamin C

Don’t worry what the Glycemic Index says about these fruits- its ok to eat them.

Every time someone has a respiratory virus people will assume that it is a cold and Vitamin C helps.  And COVID19 is, for some people, a cold.

The data about “colds” and vitamin C come from a different virus, the rhinovirus- where people were inoculated with the virus and given high dose vitamin C. Did it work? Well, seem to have shortened the cold symptoms by a part of a day – so not so great.

Vitamin C is also an anti-oxidant, so the theory is that it can help prevent some of the lung injury that occurs when the patient’s own immune system is so intent on killing virus that it will also kill other normal cells.  Does that work – well, in some studies with some lung diseases is does.

Can we extrapolate to this virus? No – and often vitamin C has been used as a “control” for other drugs that are tried. But one cannot extrapolate one study for another. There was some small evidence that patients in the ICU who received some vitamin C had a better clinical course – but that preliminary data does not mean you taking vitamin C will prevent COVID19.

Will IV vitamin C be better? No it will not be. You can get the same levels of vitamin C by taking a pill, but food is better. But someone will sell you an IV of vitamin C.

Too much vitamin C – can be toxic (anything can be toxic) and mostly it is peed out. So if you take mega dose of vitamin C you will have hte same result as if you took the excess pills and flushed them down the toilet. Your body cannot store vitamin C.

Should you take vitamin C? No- just eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables – which you should be doing anyway. But that allows your body to use what it needs.

Hydroxychloroquine

President Trump touted it, a French study said it was the dope but it turns out – nope.

The study was horrific, and anyone who has read the study will tell you that the results were nonspecific and did not prove that the drug helped. Giving the drug to people who are healthy with COVID19 and waiting to see what happens – you would need at least 10,000 people to determine the result – they didn’t do that. It is like flipping a coin twice and saying the coin comes up heads. You need longer term follow up – they did not even do 14 day testing.

This drug is used to treat malaria and now is in short supply because people are wanting the drug. So kids are dying of malaria because someone thinks this drug can help them.

The drug is also used in Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis – which means, people who have real need for the drug cannot get a hold of it.

Some Hope: Remdesivir

In preliminary studies this drug, which is an antiviral drug that was initially developed against Ebola, turns out to have promising results in an early study out of The University of Chicago and other studies looking at “compassionate use” – meaning, the drug company gives it on a trial for patients.

This is the first drug that has hope for us. Still, watchful waiting for other studies to come forward.

REFERENCES:

Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Treatment of Patients Infected with 2019-New Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2): A Review and Perspective.Yang Y et al. Int J Biol Sci. (2020)

A Comprehensive Literature Review on the Clinical Presentation, and Management of the Pandemic Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).Kakodkar P, Kaka N, Baig MN.Cureus. 2020 Apr 6;12(4):e7560. doi: 10.7759/cureus.7560. Review.PMID: 32269893

A new clinical trial to test high-dose vitamin C in patients with COVID-19.Carr AC.Crit Care. 2020 Apr 7;24(1):133. doi: 10.1186/s13054-020-02851-4. No abstract available.PMID:32264963