COVID Doc Says Hydroxychloroquine ‘Highly Effective’ and Fears Are Overblown – Now FDA Chief Admits It Might Help

AHA Publisher — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 07:00:10 +0000

Lori Johnson via CBN News – A Tennessee physician has a message for COVID-19 patients: Use hydroxychloroquine “if you can find a doctor with guts enough to prescribe it.” Meanwhile, the US Food and Drug Commissioner Stephen Hahn said some studies “suggest a benefit” to using the drug on COVID-19, despite the fact that the government agency issued guidance stating the use of the drug should be avoided unless it’s being studied in a clinical trial or for hospital use. In a radio interview, Hahn reiterated the fact that doctors are free to prescribe the drug “off label,” and that the FDA “does not regulate the practice of medicine.” Dr. Tom Rogers is one of those physicians who prescribe hydroxychloroquine to his COVID-19 patients. He told CBN News he personally has found the drug to be a “highly effective” way to treat the virus, provided the drug is prescribed in the early stages of the disease and is combined with the antibiotic azithromycin and a zinc supplement. “It’s a very controversial, kind of ‘Trump drug’,” he told CBN News. “There were initially a bunch of studies that said it worked, and then the powers that be came out with some other studies that said it didn’t work. But there are many, many studies and many doctors who I’ve talked to personally, on the front lines that use it all the time and it works.” He continued, “You have to use it very early,” he said. “The studies that said it didn’t work, those were hospitalized patients that were very sick.” He said possible negative consequences of taking hydroxychloroquine are over-blown. “They’re claiming it causes cardiac arrhythmia, which is rare,” he says. “I’ve never seen that. I’ve talked to rheumatologists who’ve used it for decades, they’ve never seen it.” Dr. Rogers says he prefers to prescribe the hydroxychloroquine cocktail to patients with symptoms such as fever, aches, loss of taste or smell, and believes it can prevent a patient from going to the hospital. In addition to hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin and zinc, Dr. Rogers said there are other ways patients in the early stages of COVID-19 can avoid landing in the hospital. Those include the inhaled steroid Budesonide combined with azithromycin and zinc. Budesonide is a common asthma drug he prescribes to patients who test positive for COVID-19 and have mild respiratory symptoms such as “cough, wheezing or shortness of breath that’s not acute yet.” Still, neither hydroxychloroquine nor budesonide is recommended by the FDA to treat COVID-19 because their effectiveness has not been proven in randomized, controlled studies, which is the standard requirement for FDA approval. To read the original article click here. For more articles from CBN News click here.

The post COVID Doc Says Hydroxychloroquine ‘Highly Effective’ and Fears Are Overblown – Now FDA Chief Admits It Might Help appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

Vitamin C May Shorten Ventilation in Critically Ill Patients

AHA Publisher — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 07:00:04 +0000

University of Helsinki via EurekAlert – Vitamin C administration shortened the duration of mechanical ventilation in critical care patients, but the effect depended on the severity of illness. In five controlled trials including 471 patients requiring ventilation for over 10 hours, vitamin C shortened ventilation time on average by 25% according to a meta-analysis published in Journal of Intensive Care. Vitamin C has numerous biochemical effects. It can influence the cardiovascular system through its involvement in the synthesis of norepinephrine and vasopressin, and energy metabolism through its participation in the synthesis of carnitine. In randomized trials, vitamin C has lowered blood pressure, decreased the incidence of atrial fibrillation and decreased bronchoconstriction. A previous meta-analysis of 12 controlled trials found that vitamin C reduced ICU stay on average by 8%. Critical care patients often have very low vitamin C plasma levels. In healthy people, 0.1 grams per day of vitamin C is usually sufficient to maintain a normal plasma level. However, much higher doses, in the order of grams per day, are needed for critically ill patients to increase their plasma vitamin C levels to within the normal range. Therefore, high vitamin C doses may be needed to compensate for the increased metabolism in critically ill patients. Harri Hemilä from the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Elizabeth Chalker from the University of Sydney, Australia, carried out a systematic review of vitamin C for mechanically ventilated critical care patients. They identified 9 relevant controlled trials, and 8 of them were included in the meta-analysis. On average, vitamin C administration shortened ventilation time by 14%, but the effect of vitamin C depended on the duration of ventilation. Patients who are more seriously ill require longer ventilation than those who are not as sick. Therefore, Hemilä and Chalker hypothesized that the effect of vitamin C might be greater in trials with sicker patients who need longer ventilation. Vitamin C had no effect when ventilation lasted for 10 hours or less. However, in 5 trials including 471 patients who required ventilation for over 10 hours, dosage of 1 to 6 g/day of vitamin C shortened ventilation time on average by 25%. “Vitamin C is a safe, low-cost essential nutrient. Given the strong evidence of benefit for more severely ill critical care patients along with the evidence of very low vitamin C levels in such patients, ICU patients may benefit from the administration of vitamin C. Further studies are needed to determine optimal protocols for its administration. Future trials should directly compare different dosage levels,” says Dr. Hemilä. To read the original article click here.

The post Vitamin C May Shorten Ventilation in Critically Ill Patients appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

respirator Archives - Amazing Health Advances

COVID Doc Says Hydroxychloroquine ‘Highly Effective’ and Fears Are Overblown – Now FDA Chief Admits It Might Help

Vitamin C May Shorten Ventilation in Critically Ill Patients