Military field therapy
"Therapy against COVID-19 should be military-field." A scientist from Novosibirsk believes that he has found a way to defeat the virus
Irina Figurina, "Doctor Peter"
Not to treat covid, but to prevent it. The new discovery was made by Andrey Gromov, head of the Thrombosis Prevention Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He told "Dr. Peter" that he had found a way to stop the development of the disease at the earliest stages. Recall that Andrei Gromov was one of the first to point out the high risk of blood clots in patients with COVID-19 and suggested anticoagulant therapy at the beginning of the pandemic.
– Andrey Alexandrovich, in April you told us that you had found a way to turn a new coronavirus infection into a kind of ordinary flu and make it manageable, preventing the formation of blood clots. What did you end up with?
– Yes, indeed, with coronavirus infection, microvessels mainly suffer. Our Thrombosis Prevention Center has been researching blood flow and microcirculation for more than 30 years, we are known in world science for research in this area, and clinical experience has been accumulated. Therefore, it was easier for us to decipher the mechanisms of COVID-19 development and choose a therapy. In March, we formulated the concept that COVID-19 is a viral respiratory disease that, during its development, transforms into viral microthrombovasculitis. After the publications, Russia was the first to introduce the use of kleksan (heparin) in the national recommendations of the Ministry of Health. But then the accents in our work changed. In therapy, we tried to block the development of the disease in six directions. And when we started working directly with patients with COVID-19, we saw that some patients managed to prevent the development of viral pneumonia, some simply managed to stop the disease, and therapy in the early stages is as effective as possible. At first, we did not expect that the infection is not just treated, it is also prevented.
– But all doctors say with one voice that they treat only the symptoms of the coronavirus, but not the disease itself.
– The disease is treated normally if you change the strategy. All over the world, medicine today makes the main bet on destroying the virus inside a person and suppressing the immune response. However, all serious antiviral drugs reduced the activity of a number of body enzymes, just as a virus does. Severe intoxication with this infection occurs due to the accumulation of our own products: bradykinin, complement, lactate, thrombin… And the more serious the drug, the more influence it has on its own enzyme systems. Figuratively speaking, our medicinal artillery, destroying the virus, hits our own body, in which we still have to live and live. We analyzed the main mechanisms of the development of a new coronavirus infection and decided to block them, treat the disease, and not destroy the virus. Limit intoxication and repair damaged cells. As practice has shown, we have calculated the targets for treatment correctly.
In addition, coronavirus aggression is akin to a fire. It flows, growing, in a cascade. If you make a diagnosis, get results, call a doctor, buy prescription drugs for a pharmacy at a pharmacy – in case of a fire during this time, the building will burn down.
On December 2, the WHO research group, which brought together 405 leading hospitals from 30 countries, primarily from the USA and Europe, published the results of the largest international study. All the main antiviral agents used in international protocols to suppress coronavirus did not affect the outcomes and severity of the disease. The mortality rate was 11.8%. At a recent conference, Denis Protsenko, the chief physician of the 40th GKB (Kommunarka), said that since the beginning of the pandemic, 30 thousand patients had been treated in his hospital, the mortality rate was 8.5%.
– What do you suggest?
– The main and basic principle is to block the intoxication caused by coronaviruses, SARS–CoV-2, by the way, does not have its own heavy toxin, it has medium toxicity. The virus turns off our enzyme systems and provides a cascade accumulation of our own toxins. And in no case should this intoxication be intensified by heavy antiviral therapy or heavy antibiotics.
– At the first symptoms of the disease, doctors advise drinking antipyretic and walking so that blood clots do not appear. All treatment begins if the disease turns into a moderate or severe form. You say that it is possible to interrupt its development at the very beginning. But how?
– With a small viral load, the course of the disease can be interrupted if T-cell immunity is stimulated in the first hours – cells, not antibodies. Antibodies "turn on" very slowly – the most active appear after one week, long-acting antibodies appear in general after three weeks. But T-immunity and innate immunity are triggered at the onset of the disease – an enemy has appeared, the cells immediately explode like antipersonnel mines. The cellular hemostasis system, which forms cellular thrombi, is also involved in innate immunity. Therefore, the bet was placed on the stimulation and support of T-cell and NK-cell immunity. If the immune system has not coped with the infection in the first hours, then antithrombotic and organ-protecting therapy is tightened. And so, to repel the attack of the virus, it is enough to stimulate T-cell immunity and activate cell metabolism. But since the virus hits several groups of enzymes at once, they need to be activated. We started with thrombosis and vasculitis, created the first protective scheme, and then the first patients appeared, the scheme expanded and the emphasis shifted. Now the therapy we offer is primarily preventive, military-field, if you like – we insist that the patient should be treated immediately, in the first hours after the onset of symptoms. The drugs are well-known, widely available, do not require huge material costs.
– How did you understand that your treatment regimen is effective?
– We evaluated the effectiveness of our therapy on a group of patients over the age of 45, including those with chronic diseases. The results of treatment in 161 patients were analyzed. To be honest, during this time I have added a lot of gray hair – when you treat serious patients according to your own method, even with generally recognized drugs, the responsibility is enormous. 35 patients from our study were with severe course and with concomitant diseases – bronchopulmonary diseases, liver diseases and hypertension, oncology, bedridden. But no one died. Moreover, not a single patient from this group needed a ventilator.
– And who are these people who entrusted their lives to you?
– These are fellow doctors, their family members, patients from Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg and Moscow. They themselves actively applied for therapy, according to the principles published by us in medical publications. We conducted someone remotely, someone was treated at our center. But we led all these patients into the first wave. And now we are just drowning under a wave of appeals – two thousand people are already being treated according to our scheme throughout the country. Scaling up the approach, transferring therapy into the hands of other doctors did not interfere with treatment. The treatment protocol was sent to 14 countries upon request, we provided five thousand protocols to doctors in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.
– Does the Ministry of Health know about your developments?
– Everything is developing too rapidly, literally by the day and by the hour. In fact, you turned to the front line. These are fresh results. And most of all they stunned us. We created a method of treatment, we knew that we had laid down the right principles, we hoped to improve the results of traditional therapy by 30-50%. The Ministry of Health is now inundated with proposals for testing new coronavirus drugs, vaccines and test systems. Each drug is tested in at least eight different hospitals. In January, we will publish our work in a medical journal and a broad discussion will begin in the domestic and international medical environment. The main criterion is practice, treatment results, cured patients. It will be evaluated according to it. And our result is not accidental, here we used the experience of the Russian school of hemostasis and all the experience we had previously gained in studies of blood flow disorders with a dozen institutes and federal centers of our Novosibirsk scientific center. Therefore, the main treatment protocol was named "Novosibirsk". Now the treatment scheme we have proposed is being distributed across the country on the principle of word of mouth.
– In your native Novosibirsk, the Vector Research Center has developed an antikovid vaccine. Do you believe that the vaccine will save us all from the coronavirus?
- I don't just believe, I've worked with virologists who create it. The vaccine is a powerful means of protection. The problem is that the virus is very insidious, it perfectly disguises itself and creates new mutations. A lot of them have accumulated over the past six months. Just a couple of days ago, the results of a study were published that found a new strain of virus in Denmark and Norway, the mutation of which allows hiding from antibodies. Let me remind you that antibodies are part of the immune response created by the vaccine. Some patients from risk groups will not be vaccinated – the vaccine will be too much of an immune burden for them. Those who get sick again, as a rule, have weak immunity and a number of chronic diseases. That is why a preventive approach is so important in COVID-19. Prevention is simple. Get enough sleep, do not overwork, move actively, heal problems with the intestines, duodenum, stomach and liver.
Spr avka
The treatment protocol provides that therapy begins as quickly as possible when the first symptoms appear. And it does not require laboratory confirmation of infection. The task is to "get ahead of the virus in the development of complications, stop the disease in the first hours and days. The loss of time is unacceptable."
If it starts early, then the use of drugs of the main protocol is sufficient. And there are several of them, depending on the patient's condition, the need for concomitant therapy and the stage of development of the disease. Separately, it is stipulated that at the beginning of the disease, copious drinking is required and restriction of products containing rapidly absorbed carbohydrates (sweets, flour and confectionery, sugar, sweet carbonated drinks).
The list of drugs used in the Novosibirsk protocol is large, so that there are no attempts to self-medicate, let's just say that in the acute phase (1-7 days of severe and moderate course of the disease), already used drugs are used (steroid hormones, anticoagulants, antiviral drugs), as well as cytoflavin to reduce the severity of intoxication and restore tissue respiration, drugs magnesium, preparations for liver maintenance. If there is a cough – depending on its nature ("dry" or "wet") – drugs for suppressing or coughing up plus diluting sputum and inhaled steroids. The protocol also includes decongestant medications, including for inflamed mucous membranes of the nose, throat and ears. Additionally – preparations of echinacea and propolis, mummy, if there are no contraindications.
The protocol separately describes treatment regimens for patients with a history of bleeding, situations in which the use of antibiotics is required (and they are rare – only 8% of cases of the disease), features of taking anticoagulants for the prevention of postcovid complications.
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