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Yellowdog's avatar

Smears and stupidity aside, how far away are we from developing an inhaled or ingested biopharmaceutical antiseptic, such as Pulmotect, Inc., to combat COVID-19 or pneumonia, etc?

Asked by Yellowdog (12216points) May 1st, 2020

I would be interested to know about current drugs or therapies that involve the lungs or blood producing superoxides, such as those by Pulmotect inc, or whatever the reference was Trump was mentioning. I have not heard any serious discussion of it, but I know it has been used to treat pneumonia. Is such an antiseptic currently available and how effective would it be used for Covid-19?

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JLeslie's avatar

I agree Caravanfan would know best.

I don’t think they use antiseptics like bleach or alcohol, which kind of kills a bacteria splat, like stomping on a bug. I think that was the big controversy in the news about what Trump said.

I think there has been use or studies done with pneumonia with inhaled antibiotics, but I think that probably works by decreasing cell division somehow. Also, I think they use inhaled saline type solutions, or have tried it, to get the cilia moving that clears the lungs. I have absolutely no idea what is being done or tested for COVID patients regarding this, but I know Caravanfan mentioned in the early days of dealing with COVID that the diagnose didn’t really matter much regarding treatment, but that might have changed now.

Note: antibiotics would work on bacterial infection, and COVID as far as they know does not have a bacterial infection causing the pneumonia, so an antibiotic would not work. It would have to be an antiviral. People who get pneumonia from flu typically are suffering from a secondary infection to the flu that is bacterial

As an aside: this isn’t what you were asking about, but we do have flu vaccines that are inhaled, but that is to prevent getting sick, not a treatment.

Patty_Melt's avatar

About ten months.

SQUEEKY2's avatar

@Patty_Melt where did you get the ten months figure?

Yellowdog's avatar

@SQUEEKY2 The treatment Trump was referring to was a has already been around for almost four years, and I am not sure why it was so quickly ridiculed and misquoted by our wonderful media.

It stimulates the body’s natural defenses to provide,broad-spectrum, fast-acting protection against bacterial pneumonia (including MRSA), for the treatment of influenza, fungal pneumonia,,and Class A bioterror agents (including anthrax, tularemia).

I was treated in 2017 for pneumonia with a Pulmotect bio-pharmaceutical product that was used with an inhaler.

http://pulmotect.com/about/our-company/

Pneumonia is what actually kills people with COVID. I have not heard any discussion at all on its effects on the Covid virus,

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Soubresaut's avatar

Don’t “ingested biopharmaceutical antiseptics” that work already exist, and aren’t they called antibiotics and antiviral medicines?

Trump’s ignorant ramblings—or as you put it, his “stupidity”—aside, there are already hundreds of studies happening to test various antiviral medicines’ effectiveness against this virus (as well as other treatment strategies, including vaccines). None of those studies involve ingesting or inhaling bleach, isopropyl alcohol, or other disinfectant cleaning agents.

From my layperson’s understanding, antibiotics and antiviral medications act in ways that are specific to their targets; by contrast, disinfectant cleaning agents rely on our skin (and rubber gloves and a well-ventilated area) to protect us from a similar fate as the microbes they kill.

I’ve heard various estimates from various experts, but I do know that scientists and doctors and other medical experts are working as fast and as hard as they can. Trump would look smarter (and be smarter) if he would more willingly defer to the experts in this field rather than trying to keep the spotlight on himself.

(Also, Trump himself claimed later that he was being sarcastic with his statements on this, so why take them seriously?)

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