Jonker and his colleagues will administer larazotide to 32 patients, ages 7 to 21, who will take it for eight weeks. An additional 16 patients will receive a placebo. To be eligible for the trial, patients must have detectable coronavirus spike protein present in their blood. The aim is to see if reducing intestinal permeability can make a noticeable difference in symptoms and quality of life in young patients.
Conducting such a test was not easy. “It started last year, but we had to suspend it for several months because of staffing and drug supply issues,” Yonker said. “One of the requirements is that we need to make sure that the spike protein is present in the blood, but this requires multiple blood draws from these children, which takes time. We expect it will take another year or two to get all the patients we need, but we would like to move faster.”
With these results, researchers will determine whether leaky gut is likely to be the main cause of the disease, at least for some patients, and whether larazotide should be more widely tested as a treatment. It will help you.
There may also be other intestinal-related involvement. Brodin believes that in some children, the virus is not completely excreted and remains in the intestine, actively damaging the intestinal wall and contributing to gastrointestinal problems. He suspects that the persistence of the virus may trigger an autoimmune response in the bloodstream, causing further symptoms.
Dr. Yonker’s trial is encouraging other pediatric long-term coronavirus researchers to start their own trials exploring other theories behind the symptoms. Danilo Buoncenso, a pediatrician at Rome’s Gemelli University Hospital who conducted the first study to examine whether children develop long-term coronavirus infections, said the study was interesting. Ta. He is currently seeking funding for an ambitious clinical trial testing multiple treatments.
Buonsenso’s work includes studies that suggest that blood clots and inflammation within the lining of blood vessels, known as the endothelium, may play a role in causing certain symptoms. Separately, he said that some children with long-term COVID-19 infections are suffering from postural tachycardia, which also affects many adults with long-term COVID-19 infections. He led a study that discovered that patients also suffer from a condition called (POTS).
“In my opinion, there will not be a single drug that will solve lingering coronavirus because multiple things have been documented,” he says. “We need to investigate the role of low-dose anticoagulants, which are known to be effective in reducing endothelial inflammation. Medications also need to be considered.
Meanwhile, Yonker’s focus on the gut is an important first step. Given the desperate situation of children and their parents suffering from this disease, she hopes that her trial, if successful, will provide evidence-based treatment options, especially for children. are. “Based on the results from trials in adults, it is imperative that we advocate for timely treatment advances for children suffering from long-term COVID-19 infections, rather than waiting for trickle-down guidance.” “I think it’s important,” she says.
(Tag translation) Science
