Heparin? “Using it at home” in case of Covid “is not recommended, especially for non-immobilized patients”. Cortisone drugs with few or no symptoms? You risk an own goal to take them preventively or early because “they reduce the immune response”. Even in the cases indicated, administration should not take place earlier than 4 days after the onset of symptoms. And then they are not all the same: only dexamethasone is indicated for therapy.
Hydroxychloroquine: not recommended for therapeutic or preventive purposes, there is no evidence of efficacy. The Ivermectin so much called into question these days? “Not recommended either as a therapy or as a prevention due to its uselessness against the coronavirus and other risk profile.”
Covid, those antibodies that betray us and help the virus
by Jacopo Vergari
These are some of the 10 points with which the experts gathered in the Transversal Pact for Science together with the Italian Biotechnologists Association dismantle what they define as “hoaxes on home care”. Scientists analyze one by one those therapies defined as’ early and to be done at home, promoted through social networks, inviting you to beware: “Even if they are presented as miraculous, they are not and pose a risk for the sick”, warn, recalling some striking cases of the past, of treatments proposed with the same script, from Stamina to the Di Bella treatment.
Home care exists and is regulated
“Serious home care exists in Italy and is regulated and based on scientific evidence”, point out the experts who also ask “the competent bodies” to intervene, from the ministry to the Higher Institute of Health (Iss), from the AIFA to the Higher Council of Health (Css) and the Guarantor for privacy, but also professional orders and scientific societies. They are asked “to fulfill their role and to verify and intervene with respect to behaviors that potentially put people’s lives at risk”.
Covid can be treated at home. But no to do it yourself
The 10 points
To clarify what is wrong with some proposals circulating online, the experts share “at least 10 things we know about the home management of Covid-19”.
In addition to those already mentioned, the chapter is dealt with antibiotics: are not recommended, unless a major bacterial infection is suspected after medical examination. The antivirals like lopinavir, ritonavir are not recommended as they have proved ineffective, while remdesivir is only recommended for hospital use.
The parvulan, another name that has begun to swirl around in relation to Covid, is “a generic immunostimulator registered in Brazil, but not in Italy, as an adjuvant for the treatment of acne, it is not recommended due to its uselessness against Sars-CoV-2 “.
There is no evidence, it is repeated again. As well as “the use of vitamin D, lattoferrina, quercetin and other food supplements is not recommended for therapeutic and prophylactic ineffectiveness “.
It also explains the meaning of one of the concepts most opposed by the promoters of home care immediately and in abundance: the watchful waiting. The experts, who urge not to take “useless and potentially harmful drugs”, clarify that “85% of those who come into contact with the Sars-CoV-2 virus remain asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic.
This is the data that justifies the ‘watchful wait’, because in most cases our immune system is able to manage the infection independently, and the simple aid of paracetamol and anti-inflammatories is sufficient in the presence of fever, joint pain or muscular. There pharmacological therapy it is indicated only in particular cases and there are precise protocols for the management of home patients.
Last point: antibodies and plasma. “Monoclonals – explain the Pact for science and Italian biotechnologists – are currently indicated, within 10 days of the onset of symptoms, for some risk categories such as obese, dialysis. The hyperimmune plasma has not shown that it can give certain benefits” .
Covid, home therapies are popping up on the web. But they are false and dangerous
“Slogans create false hope and put people’s lives at risk”
Scientists return to the conference held in recent days and stigmatize “the fact that pseudoscientific information has found space in a room of the Senate of the Republic”. “The Stamina and Di Bella cases should have taught us to doubt those who promote pseudotherapies without bringing scientific evidence, but only stories that are very often lacking in any corroboration. We need evidence-based medicine, which must be published, discussed and shared all within the scientific community, and not slogans fed to the streets or in the media, the only result of which is to create false hopes in people and induce them not to adopt behaviors that could save their lives “.
Requests for funds and releases that pass risks on to patients
The experts ask the institutions to intervene against behaviors such as: “The prescription of off-label therapies that use useless or harmful drugs and supplements, regardless of the timing of administration (such as cortisone or heparin), or the recommended posology or the interaction between them – they list – the advertising and prescription of these therapies via the web, without the patient visiting and without there being a scientific rationale or an adequate data collection phase for monitoring the results obtained; continuous misrepresentation and denigration of the official home protocol and of the work of the thousands of general practitioners who apply it; the request to sign not an informed consent, but a release for the doctor who prescribes these ‘treatments’, in which it is downloaded to the patient any civil and criminal liability, which is illegitimate in our country; the absence of clear and precise information on the treatment ento of personal and sensitive data that are collected even with completely inadequate means to guarantee their protection; the continuous request for ‘donations’ in opaque ways such as Bitcoin or Swiss accounts “.
An open letter and a collection of signatures
The doctor and science communicator also took a stand on the risks of pseudoscience and pseudomedicine in relation to Covid in recent days Except for grace, author of an open letter and promoter of a collection of signatures to ask the institutions for a clear position.
“Parallel health services on social networks”
“Anachronistic” parallel “health services have been created, which act on social networks complete with sensitive data collection, online medical prescriptions, acceptance service and switchboard – writes Di Grazia -. There are those who recommend personalized galenic preparations, invented at the moment, according to one’s mood and without any connection with scientific knowledge, even indicating the pharmacy in which to look for the preparations. In some cases the prescriptions have no scientific proof, on the contrary going against current knowledge and available data. Whoever organizes these groups spreads the ‘idea that there is a boycott at a central level (governments, ministries, authorities) that prevents citizens from being treated with the most effective medicines (obviously the alternative ones) thus also creating a sense of distrust towards the institutions themselves. from the possible presence of crimes in these behaviors it is undeniable that it is a medical “anarchy” and there cowardly unbearable – he concludes -, dangerous and that creates a general feeling of loss of control over these individuals by the authorities who seem, if not unaware, not aware of the serious problem.
.