COVID-19 Clinical Trials and Expanded Access

The aims of the present study are: 1. To explore the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the smoking behavior of youth smokers 2. To explore the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the Youth Quitline service in Hong Kong

A continuous infusion of Dexmedetomidine (DEX) will be administered to 80 patients admitted to Critical Care because of signs of Respiratory Insufficiency requiring non-invasive ventilation. Measurements of respiratory performance and quantification of cellular and molecular inflammatory mediators. The primary outcome will be the avoidance of mechanical ventilation with secondary outcomes duration of mechanical ventilation, avoidance of delirium after sedation and association of mediators of inflammation to outcomes. Outcomes will be compared to a matched historical control (no DEX) series

Coronavirus disease was first diagnosed in December 2019, in the city of Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization recently declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a pandemic. The infection is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is a single-stranded RNA virus, which in humans causes mild respiratory symptoms and generally has a good prognosis. However, in a certain group of patients it manifests as severe pneumonia, respiratory distress syndrome, multiple organ dysfunction and death. The factors associated with a worse prognosis are older than 60 years, the presence of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity. According to studies carried out in the Eastern world, the prevalence of liver injury in patients with COVID-19 disease varies between 14% and 53%, being more prevalent in patients with severe symptoms of COVID-19 disease. It is not really known whether the liver involvement of patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection is secondary to the direct effect of the virus on the liver. One of the mechanisms of action of SARS-CoV-2 is through the binding to the angiotensin-converting enzyme receptor, which is present in cholangiocytes, this could explain its excretion in faeces. However, liver injury could be due to the immune response generated in the body by the virus with systemic inflammatory response syndrome and the release of inflammatory cytokines such as IL6, generating direct cytopathic damage to the liver. On the other hand, it could be the product of hepatotoxic drugs administered during hospitalization, such as antibiotics, antivirals or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Liver biopsy described microvacuolar steatosis, and a mild portal and lobular inflammatory infiltrate . Therefore, the aim this study is to assess the prevalence of liver complications (liver injury, decompensation of cirrhosis) in patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in Latin America. As secondary objectives, the investigators will describe the clinical characteristics of COVID-19 disease and identify risk factors associated with poor prognosis,

It is critical to establish an effective form of telemedicine during the Covid 19 pandemic, that will allow safe social distancing of clinicians and patients. The investigators serve as the regional plastic, burns and reconstructive centre for the West of Scotland, population 3 million. All face to face clinics have been cancelled and converted to telephone/telemedicine only consultations. The investigators will establish both 2D and 3D telemedicine as normal patient follow up practice during this period. The aim is to implement a 3D telemedicine system to facilitate patient follow up and remote physiotherapy, that will act as if the patient is physically 'present' in the room. Physiotherapy is crucial to patient outcomes after burns contractures, hand trauma and cancer reconstruction. The 3D telemedicine system will be built by an industrial partner, with CE marked equipment, specifically to help during the Covid-19 Pandemic. This study forms a follow on study to the investigator's pilot study (based on clinical feedback only)

In December 2019, an outbreak of pneumonia of initially unknown cause was detected in Wuhan (Hubei, China), and it was quickly determined that it was caused by a new coronavirus, that is, the SARS-CoV- 2 virus, causing the disease called COVID-19. Since then, the outbreak has spread to 5 continents, affecting 185 countries or regions, with more than 2,500,000 confirmed cases as of April 21, 2020. Ecuador, the 9th country according to territorial extension, and the 7th according to the number of inhabitants in South America, is the 4th country with the highest number of cases in that region of the world, only behind Brazil, Peru and Chile. According to data from the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) of Ecuador, as of April 20, 2020, the National Institute for Public Health Research (INSPI) has registered 33,279 samples, of which 10,128 are positive for SARS-CoV-2. By far, the province of Guayas where Guayaquil is located, the main city in terms of number of inhabitants of the country, is the region with the highest number of affected, with 6921 confirmed cases and 6274 with suspicion. Given the importance of this infection, the severity in some cases, its rapid distribution, and the differences in the Ecuadorian population with respect to the other countries where infected patients have been reported, the investigators consider that an updated analysis of cases, taking as a reference, patients seen in various hospitals of the city of Guayaquil can help identify the clinical characteristics and severity of the disease.

SARS-CoV-2 induces over-production of inflammatory cytokines, and especially interleukin-6 (IL-6). The apparently strong association between blood levels of inflammaory cytokines and SARS-CoV-2 disease severity has led clinicians to evaluate the administration of steroids or anti-IL-6 antagonists in severely ill patients. As of this day, biomarkers capable of predicting clinical disease progression in Covid-19 patients with mild-to-moderate symptoms have not yet been formally identified. Identifying such markers and evaluating their predictive value may be exploited to guide patient care management, and as such forms the core objective of this proposal. Because of strong inter-individual variations in the ability of innate immune cells to produce cytokines, the hypothesis the investigators formulate and intend to test is that innate IL-6 responsiveness varies between recently infected Covid-19 patients and could predict disease outcome. To test this hypothesis, the investigators propose to follow recently infected chronic haemodialysis patients with moderate Covid-19 symptoms. These patients stand a higher risk to progress to severe disease. The investigators plan to collect a blood sample in these patients using a system whereby ex vivo cytokine production is initiated in the very same blood collection tube without prior separation and centrifugation, thus reducing labour and operator bias. After incubation with or without known innate immune stimuli, the cell-free phase from each collection-culture tube will be assayed for IL-6 content. Associations between IL-6 content and disease outcome (encephalopathy, transfer to acute care or death) will be determined in 115 Covid-19 chronic haemodialysis patients with moderate symptoms followed in 9 centers.

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), first merged in China in December 2019, is now becoming a Public Health Emergency, recently confirmed as a pandemic disease by the World Health Organization. In particular, since February 2020, a rapidly growing number of cases has been identified in Italy. The clinical picture of ranges from asymptomatic cases, mild upper respiratory tract infections to severe pneumonia with respiratory failure and death. In most severe cases, COVID-19 disease may be complicated by acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), septic shock and multiorgan failure. It results fundamental to early identify those subjects who rapidly may worsen their clinical status, often requiring an intensive care unit (ICU) admission. It has been showed that, mainly in more severe forms of SARS-Cov-2 disease, there is the development of an hyperinflammatory status resembling a cytokine storm syndrome, as already reported in SARS patients. A recent study by Haung et al. reported that patients with COVID-19 infection showed high amounts of IL1B, IFN-gamma, IP10 and MCP1, probably linked to activated T-helper1 (Th1) cell responses. Those requiring ICU admission had higher levels of cytokines than those subjects not requiring ICU admission, thus suggesting that cytokine storm was associated with disease severity. A similarity between cytokine profile of COVID-19 disease and secondary haemophagocytic syndrome (sHLH) has been reported. Therefore, it was suggested to screen all patients with severe COVID-19 infection both for hyperinflammatory markers (like ferritin), and the HScore commonly used to generate a probability for diagnosis of sHLH (8), which includes some laboratory parameters like triglycerides, fibrinogen, ferritin, serum aspartate aminostransferase. Based on our experience on patients affected by pneumonia from Covid19, we have observed that those subjects with a more severe prognosis might have some predictive markers. We intend to verify if these markers can identify those subjects with Covid19 infection who need a more intensive therapy and to find a prognosis score.

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) at the end of 2019 has seen numerous patients experiencing severe acute lung injury (ALI), which developed into severe respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The mortality was as high as 20% -40%. Due to the lack of effective antiviral treatments, supporting treatment is the predominant therapy for COVID-19 pneumonia. Its cure is essentially dependent on the patient's immunity. While the immune system eliminates the virus, numerous inflammatory cytokines are produced and a cytokine storm occurs in severe cases. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) play an important role in injury repair and immune regulation, showing advantageous prospects in the treatment of COVID-19 pneumonia. MSCs prevent cytokine storms by retarding the TNF-α pathway, alleviate sepsis by modulating macrophages, neutrophils, NK cells, DC cells, T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes. After infused, MSCs aggregate in the lungs, improve the lung microenvironment, protect alveolar epithelia, and improve pulmonary fibrosis and pulmonary function.

Efficacy of Sunlight Activated Synthetic Porphyrin in COVID-19 Infected Patients (SnPPIX) Mahmoud ELkazzaz(1),Rokia yousry abdelaziz sallam(2) _____________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ Abstract : The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) is an infectious acute respiratory caused by the novel coronavirus. The virus is a positive-strand RNA virus with high homology to bat coronavirus. Depending on published study in which , conserved domain analysis, homology modeling, and molecular docking were used to compare the biological roles of specific proteins of the novel coronavirus. The principal investigator demonstrated according to previous researches that some viral structural and nonstructural proteins could bind to the porphyrin, respectively. At the same time, orf1ab, ORF10 and ORF3a proteins coordinated to attack heme on the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin, COVID-19 binds to the porphyrin of haem and displaces iron and a study denonestrated that Covid-19 could cause acquired acute porphyria which is the condition in which there is excess accumulation of porphyrin intermediate metabolites. This point can be taken advantage of X-ray induced visible luminescence of porphyrin for producing of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS).Many porphyrins are benign in the dark but are transformed by sunlight into caustic, flesh-eating toxins Porphyrins have been used for photodynamic therapy (PDT) against a wide range of targets like bacteria, viruses and tumor cells It has been reported that ROS-based inactivation of viruses may occur due to several reasons, such as protein oxidation, single strand breaks in the RNA genome and protein-RNA crosslinking. Since ROS-based inactivation has a multi-targeted mechanism, it is much less likely that a virus would be able to develop resistance against it. Recently, porphyrins, already in use as photosensitizers for Photodynamic Therapy (PDT), were a study target to applications in medical area, namely as possible contrast agents in MRI. could be observed some examples of porphyrin derivatives already study as MRI contrast media. Low dark toxicity, neoplastic tissue affinity and synthetic accessibility are some of the important properties that contribute for its selection. In MRI studies was found that CM based on paramagnetic metalloporphyrins showed higher affinity for neoplastic tissues, observed by increased relaxation time of the neoplastic tissues, which is reflected on an increase in MRI signal and consequently in a better neoplastic lesions detection. A study demonestrated that The sulfonated tetranaphthyl porphyrin contrast agents in MRI (TNapPS), sulfonated tetra-anthracenyl porphyrin (TAnthPS), and sulfonated 2,6-difluoro-meso-tetraphenylporphine [TPP(2,6-F2)S] and its copper chelate [TPP(2,6-F2)S,Cu], which reduced HIV infection by 99, 96, 94, and 96%, respectively. Previous studies which showed that Covid -19 binds to the porphyrin of haem and displaces iron in addition to Sulfonated porphyrins and light-stimulated Sn- protoporphyrin IX have broad antiviral activity against more distinct types of viruses, Co-protoporphyrin IX and Sn-protoporphyrin IX inactivate Zika, Chikungunya and other arboviruses by targeting the viral envelope Porphyrins are amphipathic molecules able to interact with membranes and absorb light, being widely used in photodynamic therapy. Previously, we showed that heme, Co-protoporphyrin IX (CoPPIX) and Sn-protoporphyrin IX (SnPPIX) directly inactivate DENV and YFV infectious particles. Here we demonstrate that the antiviral activity of these porphyrins can be broadened to CHIKV, ZIKV, Mayaro virus, Sindb is virus and Vesicular Stomatitis virus. Porphyrin treatment causes viral envelope protein loss, affecting viral morphology, adsorption and entry into target cells , Finally, the principal investigator expect that viral load will be declined with sunlight because In particular, porphyrins absorb essentially all the UV/visible light wavelengths in the emission spectrum of the sun; hence they are active at very low doses . Keywords: COVID 2019 ,Infection, Sulfonated porphyrins and X-ray induced visible luminescence of porphyrin

This study is designed to compare the efficacy of detection of COVID-19 infection using the serology test in blood sample and the PCR-based test in the nasopharyngeal (NP) and sputum sample. Furthermore, it aims to evaluate the temporal trend of appearance of IgM and IgG in blood.