NEW ORLEANS — There’s now have a chance to take part in national studies to prevent getting sick from the coronavirus.
Several have come to the Gulf Coast area.
Some of the studies are for people who have never been infected, and others are for those of you who have tested positive, but want to keep from getting severe symptoms.
In the beginning of the pandemic, medical studies focused on the critically ill in hospitals, but now as those are yielding results, doctors are shifting to finding ways to treat people earlier in the infection.
“It's always better to prevent a disease than to treat it, and so treating people early, and preventing hospitalization is good for a number of reasons,” said Internal Medicine Physician Dr. Robert Jeanfreau who is the Medical Director of MedPharmics, LLC and the Principal Investigator at the Metairie office.
MedPharmics has four new studies that focus on prevention.
First, there is one for a vaccine. Two-thirds of people get the real vaccine, the other third, a placebo.
“The other nice thing about this study is, at the end of the study, those people who got placebo, will be offered the, the actual vaccine,” he explained.
The second study is different. Instead of a vaccine to stimulate your immune system to make antibodies to fight the coronavirus, this injection is of engineered antibodies to prevent the coronavirus from entering and attacking your cells.
“This second study is designed for people who have been in a household with someone who became infected. There's about a 10 to 15 percent chance of household members becoming infected.”
Now to the third and fourth studies. Let's say you test positive and you don't feel well, but you're not sick enough to be in a hospital. You isolate at home and hope it doesn't progress to the severe disease, which is COVID-19. Well now two antiviral medications are being tested. One is a nose spray, and the other is drops under your tongue. If they work, it would be like Tamiflu, the antiviral that helps you get over the flu faster with milder symptoms.
“And so if we do get a good early treatment, that would significantly affect the whole landscape,” said Dr. Jeanfreau.
If they are proven safe and effective, they would not only keep you out of the hospital, but lessen the days you can spread it to others.
The free studies run by MedPharmics are in Metairie, Lafayette, Covington, Slidell, Gulfport, Mobile, Albuquerque, and Phoenix. You will be compensated. To see if you qualify call MedPharmics at 504-457-2721