President Trump Has Been Treated With an Experimental COVID-19 Antibody Cocktail. What ’s That?

U.S. President Donald Trump has received a promising but experimental COVID-19 drug still in clinical trials, according to a White House statement released Friday afternoon, following his diagnosis with the disease. Sean Conley, the President’s personal physician, wrote in a memo that he treated Trump with an eight-gram dose of Regeneron’s experimental antibody cocktail. Trump has also received zinc, vitamin D, aspirin, melatonin and a heartburn drug thought to help fight COVID-19. An update from President @realDonaldTrump's physician: pic.twitter.com/cTsXO4Df6b — Kayleigh McEnany (@PressSec) October 2, 2020 Regeneron on Tuesday announced promising results related to its monoclonal antibodies—drugs that mimic the human body’s natural immune response. When the body detects an infection, it deploys proteins called antibodies to help fight it off. Monoclonal antibodies essentially kickstart that process with synthetic proteins. In preliminary results from a trial of 275 non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients who were treated with either the antibody cocktail or a placebo, Regeneron’s cocktail reduced the amount of virus in patients’ systems and helped alleviate their symptoms, the company says. The therapy worked particularly well for patients whose immune systems failed to mount a natural response to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to Regeneron’s results. While those are promising results, they have yet t...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news