As medical professionals race towards the COVID-19, many people are now hoping that the cure will be coming in far more than ever. What about the next best thing to a treatment that is safe for human consumption and is already widely available?
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What Treatment And Why Now?
Prazosin is a drug that is already safe for humans to use, and it might unlock the potential to be the cure for what people need right now.
People are sick and tired of unproven and ineffective treatments that are being promoted online with no definitive proof that it's going to work against the coronavirus, except maybe for this drug.
The thing is, a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, which are led by Maximilian Konig, has described the potential of prazosin to slow down and maybe prevent one of the worst effects that COVID-19 has to offer, the cytokine storm.
We recently published an article about the terrible effects cytokine storm has to offer along with COVID-19 and believe you me; it is fatal.
What Can You Expect From Prazosin?
Prazosin may be the next best thing as it prevents the need to go to use a ventilator and again, which is in very short supply right now and as expensive as it is. It would greatly benefit the entire world for sure, and even as many more companies are converting their production to churning out more ventilators still, they are in short supply.
It can save patients who have a severe case from COVID-19 from dying because of it. Several scientists are now involved in this new study, and prazosin, or technically known as alpha-1AR antagonists, can prevent cytokine storm in mice.
Of course, mice are way different from us humans. So what the scientists did is they collected a medical database of over 13,125 men who had acute respiratory distress or ARD from a variety of causes over the years of 2007-2015. ARD is not the same as COVID-19, although they share some similarities. If cytokine storm occurs in ARD, patients almost always are put in a ventilator, or they would die.
Read More: COVID-19 Update: Cytokine Storm Making Deadly Waves Along With Coronavirus
What Did The Study Prove?
Prazosin is often widely used by men, and thus they were able to compare the outcomes of the men who took the drug to those who didn't.
The results showed that over 22% of men who took the drug has a lower risk of either needing a ventilator and, of course, dying. Knowing 22% is not a huge percentage, it could be a game-changer for the already overwhelmed hospitals amid the growing pandemic. Even a small reduction of patients who need ventilators are a welcome sight to those who need it more.
Prazosin has already been used medically since 1974 and again is already widely available but, more importantly, inexpensive. It is by far one of the most promising treatments that are out there. Far more promising than the use of hydroxychloroquine. Regardless of the small percentage, it still removes the need for some patients to use ventilators, and this needs more study to be as effective as it can be to the general public.
