Aaron Hartman, MD (YouTube video, Aug 3, 2020) summarizes a UK phase 2 preprint of interferon beta for COVID-19 (n=101). He reports ~79% reduction in progression to severe disease, with no deaths in the treatment arm versus 6% in placebo; places this within an improving critical-care mortality trend (intubated mortality: ~80–90% early → ~40% by June → ~30% with dexamethasone → speaker estimates ~23% after interferon beta). He notes the study is small and preliminary, mentions per-dose cost (~$40–$60), and urges phase 3 confirmation.
Questions this video answers
101 patients (phase 2, UK preprint).
Approximately 79% reduction (as reported in the UK preprint).
Early (March): ~80–90% mortality; by June: ~40% mortality; with dexamethasone: ~30% mortality; after interferon beta (speaker's calculation): ~23% mortality for the sickest patients.
Treatment arm: no deaths reported; Placebo arm: 6% died (per speaker summary).
Phase 2 (primarily a safety study); small sample size and preliminary (speaker urges phase 3 confirmation).
Chapters
All right, y', all, we're gonna try this once again. We had a little bit of a technical difficulty with getting this started. So this is a quick video on some breaking news I was looking at this morning on COVID 19 treatment with interferon beta. Some of you may or may not have heard of interferon beta before, but this is actually a biologic that's been used in the past to treat hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune issues. And actually an article was published for the UK this past week showing up to 79% reduction in developing severe disease with COVID 19. So I want to just take a little backtrack briefly and talk about how revolutionary the treatment of COVID 19 has been this year. So we first started out, when we first found out about it back in March. We knew that about 80% to 90% of people who were intubated would die with COVID 19, which is terrible, terrible numbers. By June timeframe, we had dropped that down to about 40% of people that were intubated would die from it. And there's an article about two weeks ago published again from the UK. UK has been doing lots of great research with COVID 19 treatments. And we showed that another 10% reduction to 30% with dexamethasone. So we've seen from an 80% mortality to 30% mortality. That's a radical change for a disease this quick in the history of modern medicine. So as of last week, I'll be putting a link to this, putting an article on Facebook as well. But Interferon beta was shown to have another 79% reduction in developing severe disease. So that drops us down to about 20 was a 23% mortality for COVID 19 for the sickest patients, which is a four fold reduction we've seen happen over six or seven months. This is unheard of in the history of medicine in general to see a disease that was relatively fatal for a certain group, that is those who are intubated hypoxic to now 23% with this interferon beta. Briefly, the study did have a few key points. One, there's only 101 patients in it, so it was a relatively small study. The other thing is that it was a phase 2 study, which is mainly a safety study. The interesting thing about this was there was a placebo arm. But the interesting thing was that in the treatment group, no one died in the treatment group and 6% of people in the placebo group died. So very, very profound changes. I'm Excited about this because hopefully this means this will go quickly to phase three studies. Another reason to talk about this. As we're going into going back to school in the wintertime, everybody's hoping for a vaccine, a COVID 19 vaccine, which is maybe a year out, a long time from now. We're seeing such an advance in treatments from positional treatment, controlled oxygen treatment, dexamethasone and now this interferon beta that, you know, it'll be. I'm looking forward to seeing how much further we progress in actually treating this disease. I will be posting the whole article. This is one of those pre print articles coming from the uk. UK has been doing some great research in this field and this is actually coming from one of the top infectious groups in the uk. So I'm very, very confident in the outcome of it. But ultimately it's a small study, only about 101 patients. But again, to see a 79% reduction in severe disease on all the advances we've already have, this is unheard of in the history of modern disease. So my point for all this is that this is a big, big news. How much advancement we've made with treating COVID 19, how far we've come with the worst of the worst, not forgetting anywhere from 50 to 80% of patients will have their symptoms. The group that do interact with the hospital and get intubated, we've been able to reduce the mortality from 80% now to potentially 23%. So this is super helpful. Stay tuned. As I hear new things about this, I'll continue to put posts out there, I'll continue to put videos, but I think this information is really super helpful. Just because we are continuing to make advances, whether you hear about it or not, we're continuing to learn new things about this disease which are helping us take care of patients in real time. And this is unparalleled in the history of medicine to see us advance so quickly on a single disease from discovery to implementation of new therapies to new research. So hopefully it's encouraging to you all that we're actually learning so much. Stay tuned. We'll continue to post new updates. If you feel like this is helpful, continue to share with friends. But I feel like good news, like this is stuff we should share. Even if It's a phase 2 study, even if it's only 101 patients, especially since the therapy is already available, it's already pretty cheap. It's like 40 to $60 a shot. It's not very expensive. So something like this once it makes it through phase three will be readily available to lots and lots of people. Y' all take care, be safe, and be well, and we'll talk to you soon.
