ER Doctor Potentially Beat The Coronavirus With Experimental Drug Treatment

Source: Boston Globe / Getty

It will probably take a while to find a vaccine for COVID-19, but things could be looking up, thanks to an experimental drug treatment that seemed to work on one patient.

According to reports from local CBS affiliate KIRO 7, an emergency room employee at Evergreen Health in Kirkland, Washington, Dr. Ryann Padgett, was hospitalized last month after contracting the coronavirus. Padgett was extremely sick and ended up spending 24 days in the hospital, during which he was transferred to Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center. There, his condition got worse.

“In matter of 24 hours he went from breathing on oxygen to requiring a ventilator and some advanced therapies. From there he continued to get worse,” Dr. Matt Hartman of Swedish First Hill campus said.

The doctor’s lungs and kidneys started to fail him and, after exhausting all options, doctors decided to try an experimental treatment: tocilizumab.

Tocilizumab is currently approved by the FDA to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Even though they were trying several experimental treatments at the same time, doctors believe that it’s the tocilizumab that stopped Padgett’s body from overreacting to the virus, which then allowed him to stabilize himself.

“The medicine blocks one of the messengers that could be leading to this overreactive immune system response to the virus,” Swedish Cancer Institute’s Dr. Krish Patel explained. “So it may be helping by preventing the immune system from overreacting.”

In four or five days, doctors started to see improvements in Padgett’s condition, after which he was taken off of machines and able to return home. Now, the Swedish Medical Center will be joining a global randomized clinical trial that will study the effectiveness of tocilizumab on COVID-19, which could begin as early as next week.