
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, according to Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security , ELI LILLY A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week reported that convalescent plasma derived monoclonal antibody treatment (LY-CoV555), developed by Eli Lilly, showed clinical benefit in patients. The study found that patients experienced decreased viral loads and severity, and had no serious adverse effects in outpatients. The phase II trial involved outpatients that had mild to moderate COVID-19. A total of 452 patients participated, receiving either low, medium or high concentration of the antibody, or placebo. Researchers measured the change in viral load after 11 days of treatment, and the study has reported on interim findings. Patients receiving the medium dose (2800 mg) had about a 3 fold reduction in viral load. Differences among placebo and treatment groups were non-significant and smaller for both the low and the high dosage categories. However, patients receiving any antibody dose had lower symptom severity as well as lower hospitalization rates than placebo. Additionally, the percentage of adverse events was similar across treatment and placebo groups.
The report came after an announcement from the NIH that it was going to halt a trial investigating the antibody after the trial’s Data Safety Monitoring Board reviewed the data on October 26th and recommended that no further participants enroll, as it concluded there was a “low likelihood that the intervention would be of clinical value” for hospitalized patients. Scientists currently believe that while there may be possible benefit among outpatients, as observed in the NEJM study, the longer course of infection and severity among hospitalized patients reduces likelihood of benefit for the treatment. An additional hurdle is that there are highly limited doses of antibody treatments available for both the Eli Lilly and Regeron cocktails. Eli Lilly reportedly anticipates it can ship 100,000 doses of its monoclonal antibody once allowed, and that it can produce as much as a million doses by the end of the year; however, that is at the lowest dosage concentration, which was currently not found to yield significant benefit in the NEJM study.