HOUSTON — Editor's Note: The above video is about researchers at UTMB Galveston who designing blueprints for a ventilators that can be made using items commonly found in hospitals.
Baylor College of Medicine is enrolling participants in a treatment trial for adult patients with a COVID-19 diagnosis who are hospitalized at either Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center or Harris Health System’s Ben Taub Hospital.
Participants in the trial must have laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and evidence of pneumonia, such as abnormal chest X-rays, rattling sounds when breathing and a need for supplemental oxygen or illness requiring mechanical ventilation.
The study will evaluate novel therapeutic agents, the first of which is the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir.
Over the course of the study, participants will receive placebo or remdesivir intravenously for up to 10 days total. The placebo is given in equal volume in a solution that resembles remdesivir but contains only inactive ingredients.
If one therapy proves to have positive results, then this treatment will then become the standard for comparisons with new experimental treatments.
Clinicians will regularly monitor participants and will assign them daily scores based on a predefined scale of clinical outcomes that considers factors such as temperature, blood pressure and use of supplemental oxygen, among others. Participants also will be asked to provide blood samples and throat swabs. Researchers will test these specimens for SARS-CoV-2 and for the body’s response to the infection.
An independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board will monitor ongoing results to ensure patient well-being and safety as well as study integrity. The DSMB will recommend that the study be halted if there is clear and substantial evidence of a treatment difference between drug and placebo.
Enroll in this study by contacting the research staff at DMIDClinicalTrials@niaid.nih.gov.
The trial is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is a part of the National Institutes of Health. More information about the study is also available here.
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