How awful is our current state of things? You are not allowed to be neutral on things, anymore. You can’t question things, even if the inconsistencies are staring you in the face. You could show concrete evidence contrary to what some people believe and their opinions would not be swayed. This is neither here nor there; pro no anti; science nor pseudo-science. This is just commentary on people as a whole right now. Our society is filled to the brim with people striving for social justice by acting out in the banality of evil.

Anyway.

I like talking about nerdy stuff and I don’t have a forum to do that on, anymore. Facebook only attracts those who are openly against the vaccine propaganda, and twitter is filled with people who assume that you are “anti-vaxx” if you discuss new and interesting things. I wanted to discuss new and interesting things! Damnit.

I went down the rabbit hole out of curiosity of how the virus affects us at a microbio way and ended up browsing clinical trials. I found this a little interesting — using bio/surfactants as a therapy or the potential of using it as an adjuvant therapy. Unfortunately, only a handful of trials active or recruiting for this particular therapeutic. Surfactants are vital for gas exchange in our alveolar sacs as it plays a role in increasing the surface area to allow for more points of gas exchange.

Here’s what my nerdy ass found.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/…/pii/S2468584420300593
Use of biosurfactants to help alleviate the viral activity thus reducing inflammation. Other potential effects include the ability for increased permeability of the viral envelope and encapsulating its contents for extra protection; also has effects that create better permeability for other medications to cross the epithelial cells.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30068648/
Further discussion of its effects on inhibiting viral activity/fusion of enveloped viruses.

https://respiratory-research.biomedcentral.com/…/s12931…
Retrospective case-control study pilot. Findings surprisingly did not show a dramatic improvement in oxygenation specifically, which I assumed would have been a primary research focal point given the importance of surfactant on surface area and consequential diffusion.

http://ijpr.sbmu.ac.ir/article_1101419.html Another pilot study in covid.

On clinicaltrials.gov, there are roughly 24 clinical trials listed. Some are already complete, some are not related to covid, some are recruiting, and some are currently underway. I would love to see how this therapeutic might be beneficial when used in conjunction with other things. But not remdesivir whose clinical trials revealed: Green text is a positive outcome for Remdesivir.

• In patients with severe COVID-19, RDV reduced time to clinical recovery.
• Benefit of RDV was most apparent in hospitalized patients on supplemental oxygen.
• No observed benefit in those on high-flow oxygen, noninvasive ventilation, mechanical ventilation, or ECMO (…)
• No observed benefit of RDV in patients with mild or moderate COVID-19, but the number of participants in these categories was relatively small.
• No difference in time to clinical improvement, 28-day mortality, or rate of SARS-CoV-2 clearance between RDV-treated and placebo-treated patient.
• RDV did not decrease in-hospital mortality in hospitalized patients when compared to local standard of care.
• Hospitalized patients with moderate COVID-19 who received 5 days of RDV had better outcomes than those who received SOC — mortality rate was 1-2% in both arms of the trial with no statistical difference on mortality.
• In hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19 who were not on mechanical ventilation or ECMO, RDV treatment for 5 or 10 days had a similar clinical benefit.

So… Lots of benefit as you see. Evidenced based practice, right? 🙂