Coronavirus Treatment: Ruxolitinib Dramatically Reversed Lung Inflammation In Severely Ill COVID-19 Patients

Ruxolitinib, a drug that is used to treat severe systemic inflammatory syndrome in children helped 90% of severely ill COVID-19 patients to recover within two weeks, reported a new study.

The researchers at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center developed a transgenic mouse to model the deadly immune disease HLH (hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis) and might have discovered a way to save lives during the pandemic.

They found that Ruxolitinib dramatically reversed respiratory and multi-system inflammation in severely ill coronavirus patients.

“I approached our research colleagues in Wuhan and explained our observations and recommended this drug be tested to quiet the cytokine storm in the multi-system inflammation in patients with severe COVID-19 disease. The disease was spreading very rapidly and many people were dying. We believed the existing clinical drug would help save lives. So, we worked to push it forward before there is an effective vaccine for everyone,” Dr. Gang Huang, a cancer pathologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital told Daily Mail.

The Study:

43 COVID-19 patients in the age group 18–75 years with severe illness from Wuhan, China were included in the study. 50% of them were selected randomly to receive two doses of ruxolitinib daily, alongside the standard care. The other patients were given a placebo alongside the standard care.

Key findings:

• Those treated with ruxolitinib exhibited clinical improvements within a very short span of time compared to the placebo group
• 90% of COVID-19 patients who received the drug showed improvements in CT scans within 2 weeks
• 3 COVID-19 patients in the control group died of respiratory failure in the same period
• Patients who didn’t receive ruxolitinib were 14% more likely to die compared to those who took the drug. And none of them who received the drug died
• The drug significantly reduced the levels of 7 cytokines
• Also, the drug was well tolerated with low toxicities

How does ruxolitinib work?

Apart from treating HLH, the drug is also used to treat myelofibrosis (cancer of the bone marrow). Ruxolitinib hinders inflammation. This helps control a person’s immune system response and could even destroy cancer cells.

The researchers believed that the drug could help ward off cytokine storms which occur when the body doesn’t just stop fighting a virus but actually starts attacking its own cells. Since COVID-19 also caused cytokine storm in severely ill COVID-19 patients, the researchers came up with this approach of treating it with a drug that treats HLH.