Researchers at two Israeli hospitals report positive results in preliminary tests for a possible cure of COVID-19.
In the Integrated Center for Cancer Prevention at the Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, Professor Nadir Arber tested a new drug called EXO-CD24, which he says is a cheap treatment for the new coronavirus if taken daily for five consecutive days. word.
According to Ynet News, Arber has so far found the drug impressively effective. 29 of the 30 patients he put to the test were discharged from the hospital within three days, although it was not specified how serious their conditions were before using the drug.
At the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, doctors tested another possible cure on patients in a critical condition. The drug, Allocetra, was first developed by the hospital’s research center for rheumatology and internal medicine to deal with overactive immune systems that cause increased secretion of cytokine, a protein responsible for various functions of the immune system.
They found that 19 of the 21 patients on whom it was tested showed improvement within less than a week.
Although the results are promising, with barely 50 test cases between the two drugs, the actual effectiveness of one of the two has not yet been confirmed.
In contrast, nearly 50,000 people participated in the third phase of the Pfizer-Biotech vaccine trial before the medicine was cleared for public use. No placebo tests were used by any of the hospitals, which means there is no way to know if the patients’ cure was due to the drug or not on its own.
Nor would it be the first time that Israeli medical researchers have made bold allegations at a very early stage, but failed to produce significant results.
In January 2019, researchers from an Israeli company claimed that they would have a cure for cancer within a year – yes, all cancers.
Two years later, nearly 10 million people still die from cancer each year.
The announcement was widely hailed by oncologists and other cancer researchers who said all the allegations create false hope in cancer patients and their families who may already be inundated with the offerings of experimental treatments, many of which range from ineffective to mere scams.
Whether either of the two coronavirus treatments will achieve the same fate and will result or actually result in widespread testing remains to be seen.
Professor Arber has appealed to Israel’s Ministry of Health to have permission to test further, reports Ynet.