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Why scientists are studying chloroquine

 
 
Tue 7 Apr, 2020 01:52 pm
There has been a lot of "Orange man bad!" and "Trump killed old people!!!" talk on A2K because, well because you guys are mostly simpletons.

As Max says, let's look at the science.

Why scientists are studying if chloroquine could treat coronavirus

Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in vitro

Breakthrough: Chloroquine phosphate has shown apparent efficacy in treatment of COVID-19 associated pneumonia in clinical studies

Open-Data Repository on hydroxychloroquine

COVID-19: Attacks the 1-Beta Chain of Hemoglobin and Captures the Porphyrin to Inhibit Human Heme Metabolism

Covid-19 had us all fooled, but now we might have finally found its secret.

Quote:
In the last 3–5 days, a mountain of anecdotal evidence has come out of NYC, Italy, Spain, etc. about COVID-19 and characteristics of patients who get seriously ill. It’s not only piling up but now leading to a general field-level consensus backed up by a few previously little-known studies that we’ve had it all wrong the whole time. Well, a few had some things eerily correct (cough Trump cough), especially with Hydroxychloroquine with Azithromicin, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

There is no ‘pneumonia’ nor ARDS. At least not the ARDS with established treatment protocols and procedures we’re familiar with. Ventilators are not only the wrong solution, but high pressure intubation can actually wind up causing more damage than without, not to mention complications from tracheal scarring and ulcers given the duration of intubation often required… They may still have a use in the immediate future for patients too far to bring back with this newfound knowledge, but moving forward a new treatment protocol needs to be established so we stop treating patients for the wrong disease.

The past 48 hours or so have seen a huge revelation: COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells. People are simply desaturating (losing o2 in their blood), and that’s what eventually leads to organ failures that kill them, not any form of ARDS or pneumonia. All the damage to the lungs you see in CT scans are from the release of oxidative iron from the hemes, this overwhelms the natural defenses against pulmonary oxidative stress and causes that nice, always-bilateral ground glass opacity in the lungs. Patients returning for re-hospitalization days or weeks after recovery suffering from apparent delayed post-hypoxic leukoencephalopathy strengthen the notion COVID-19 patients are suffering from hypoxia despite no signs of respiratory ‘tire out’ or fatigue.

Here’s the breakdown of the whole process, including some ELI5-level cliff notes. Much has been simplified just to keep it digestible and layman-friendly.

Your red blood cells carry oxygen from your lungs to all your organs and the rest of your body. Red blood cells can do this thanks to hemoglobin, which is a protein consisting of four “hemes”. Hemes have a special kind of iron ion, which is normally quite toxic in its free form, locked away in its center with a porphyrin acting as it’s ‘container’. In this way, the iron ion can be ‘caged’ and carried around safely by the hemoglobin, but used to bind to oxygen when it gets to your lungs.

When the red blood cell gets to the alveoli, or the little sacs in your lungs where all the gas exchange happens, that special little iron ion can flip between FE2+ and FE3+ states with electron exchange and bond to some oxygen, then it goes off on its little merry way to deliver o2 elsewhere.

Here’s where COVID-19 comes in. Its glycoproteins bond to the heme, and in doing so that special and toxic oxidative iron ion is “disassociated” (released). It’s basically let out of the cage and now freely roaming around on its own. This is bad for two reasons:

1) Without the iron ion, hemoglobin can no longer bind to oxygen. Once all the hemoglobin is impaired, the red blood cell is essentially turned into a Freightliner truck cab with no trailer and no ability to store its cargo.. it is useless and just running around with COVID-19 virus attached to its porphyrin. All these useless trucks running around not delivering oxygen is what starts to lead to desaturation, or watching the patient’s spo2 levels drop. It is INCORRECT to assume traditional ARDS and in doing so, you’re treating the WRONG DISEASE. Think of it a lot like carbon monoxide poisoning, in which CO is bound to the hemoglobin, making it unable to carry oxygen. In those cases, ventilators aren’t treating the root cause; the patient’s lungs aren’t ‘tiring out’, they’re pumping just fine. The red blood cells just can’t carry o2, end of story. Only in this case, unlike CO poisoning in which eventually the CO can break off, the affected hemoglobin is permanently stripped of its ability to carry o2 because it has lost its iron ion. The body compensates for this lack of o2 carrying capacity and deliveries by having your kidneys release hormones like erythropoietin, which tell your bone marrow factories to ramp up production on new red blood cells with freshly made and fully functioning hemoglobin. This is the reason you find elevated hemoglobin and decreased blood oxygen saturation as one of the 3 primary indicators of whether the **** is about to hit the fan for a particular patient or not.

2) That little iron ion, along with millions of its friends released from other hemes, are now floating through your blood freely. As I mentioned before, this type of iron ion is highly reactive and causes oxidative damage. It turns out that this happens to a limited extent naturally in our bodies and we have cleanup & defense mechanisms to keep the balance. The lungs, in particular, have 3 primary defenses to maintain “iron homeostasis”, 2 of which are in the alveoli, those little sacs in your lungs we talked about earlier. The first of the two are little macrophages that roam around and scavenge up any free radicals like this oxidative iron. The second is a lining on the walls (called the epithelial surface) which has a thin layer of fluid packed with high levels of antioxidant molecules.. things like abscorbic acid (AKA Vitamin C) among others. Well, this is usually good enough for naturally occurring rogue iron ions but with COVID-19 running rampant your body is now basically like a progressive state letting out all the prisoners out of the prisons… it’s just too much iron and it begins to overwhelm your lungs’ countermeasures, and thus begins the process of pulmonary oxidative stress. This leads to damage and inflammation, which leads to all that nasty stuff and damage you see in CT scans of COVID-19 patient lungs. Ever noticed how it’s always bilateral? (both lungs at the same time) Pneumonia rarely ever does that, but COVID-19 does… EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

— — — — — — — — — — — — -

Once your body is now running out of control, with all your oxygen trucks running around without any freight, and tons of this toxic form of iron floating around in your bloodstream, other defenses kick in. While your lungs are busy with all this oxidative stress they can’t handle, and your organs are being starved of o2 without their constant stream of deliveries from red blood cell’s hemoglobin, and your liver is attempting to do its best to remove the iron and store it in its ‘iron vault’. Only its getting overwhelmed too. It’s starved for oxygen and fighting a losing battle from all your hemoglobin letting its iron free, and starts crying out “help, I’m taking damage!” by releasing an enzyme called alanine aminotransferase (ALT). BOOM, there is your second of 3 primary indicators of whether the **** is about to hit the fan for a particular patient or not.

Eventually, if the patient’s immune system doesn’t fight off the virus in time before their blood oxygen saturation drops too low, ventilator or no ventilator, organs start shutting down. No fuel, no work. The only way to even try to keep them going is max oxygen, even a hyperbaric chamber if one is available on 100% oxygen at multiple atmospheres of pressure, just to give what’s left of their functioning hemoglobin a chance to carry enough o2 to the organs and keep them alive. Yeah we don’t have nearly enough of those chambers, so some fresh red blood cells with normal hemoglobin in the form of a transfusion will have to do.

The core point being, treating patients with the iron ions stripped from their hemoglobin (rendering it abnormally nonfunctional) with ventilator intubation is futile, unless you’re just hoping the patient’s immune system will work its magic in time. The root of the illness needs to be addressed.

Best case scenario? Treatment regimen early, before symptoms progress too far. Hydroxychloroquine (more on that in a minute, I promise) with Azithromicin has shown fantastic, albeit critics keep mentioning ‘anecdotal’ to describe the mountain, promise and I’ll explain why it does so well next. But forget straight-up plasma with antibodies, that might work early but if the patient is too far gone they’ll need more. They’ll need all the blood: antibodies and red blood cells. No help in sending over a detachment of ammunition to a soldier already unconscious and bleeding out on the battlefield, you need to send that ammo along with some hemoglobin-stimulant-magic so that he can wake up and fire those shots at the enemy.

The story with Hydroxychloroquine
All that hilariously misguided and counterproductive criticism the media piled on chloroquine (purely for political reasons) as a viable treatment will now go down as the biggest Fake News blunder to rule them all. The media actively engaged their activism to fight ‘bad orange man’ at the cost of thousands of lives. Shame on them.

How does chloroquine work? Same way as it does for malaria. You see, malaria is this little parasite that enters the red blood cells and starts eating hemoglobin as its food source. The reason chloroquine works for malaria is the same reason it works for COVID-19 — while not fully understood, it is suspected to bind to DNA and interfere with the ability to work magic on hemoglobin. The same mechanism that stops malaria from getting its hands on hemoglobin and gobbling it up seems to do the same to COVID-19 (essentially little snippets of DNA in an envelope) from binding to it. On top of that, Hydroxychloroquine (an advanced descendant of regular old chloroquine) lowers the pH which can interfere with the replication of the virus. Again, while the full details are not known, the entire premise of this potentially ‘game changing’ treatment is to prevent hemoglobin from being interfered with, whether due to malaria or COVID-19.

No longer can the media and armchair pseudo-physicians sit in their little ivory towers, proclaiming “DUR so stoopid, malaria is bacteria, COVID-19 is virus, anti-bacteria drug no work on virus!”. They never got the memo that a drug doesn’t need to directly act on the pathogen to be effective. Sometimes it’s enough just to stop it from doing what it does to hemoglobin, regardless of the means it uses to do so.

Anyway, enough of the rant. What’s the end result here? First, the ventilator emergency needs to be re-examined. If you’re putting a patient on a ventilator because they’re going into a coma and need mechanical breathing to stay alive, okay we get it. Give ’em time for their immune systems to pull through. But if they’re conscious, alert, compliant — keep them on O2. Max it if you have to. If you HAVE to inevitably ventilate, do it at low pressure but max O2. Don’t tear up their lungs with max PEEP, you’re doing more harm to the patient because you’re treating the wrong disease.

Ideally, some form of treatment needs to happen to:

Inhibit viral growth and replication. Here plays CHQ+ZPAK+ZINC or other retroviral therapies being studies. Less virus, less hemoglobin losing its iron, less severity and damage.
Therapies used for anyone with abnormal hemoglobin or malfunctioning red blood cells. Blood transfusions. Whatever, I don’t know the full breadth and scope because I’m not a physician. But think along those lines, and treat the real disease. If you’re thinking about giving them plasma with antibodies, maybe if they’re already in bad shape think again and give them BLOOD with antibodies, or at least blood followed by plasma with antibodies.
Now that we know more about how this virus works and affects our bodies, a whole range of options should open up.
Don’t trust China. China is ASSHOE. (disclaimer: not talking about the people, just talking about the regime). They covered this up and have caused all kinds of death and carnage, both literal and economic. The ripples of this pandemic will be felt for decades.
Fini.


So, lets please, PLEASE stop with the couch side science and politicizing a terrible tragedy ripping around the world and let science, REAL science do it's thing.
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farmerman
 
  6  
Tue 7 Apr, 2020 06:55 pm
@McGentrix,
NOONE that I know of, including many of us "red Man Is brain dead douche bag" folks, have talked up this drug study. Its been on the books as an antiviral in the last corona virus outbreak and then apparently didnt go any farther.

Whats the matter with Trump is his drama queen Bullshit about all his superlative ideas that he must magically get in the middle the night. His use of superlatives has been a cause for the death of another of his accolytes for actually drinking a HDQ -SO4 "Aquarium cleaner".
Trump , in his daily campaign speech in which he takes over what could be some good information about the pandemic, is responsible for lots of really DUMB information and ideas.

The French paper, that supported it , was a possible " doctored case study "in which the stats were a bit "packaged for investors" . and weve already known that HDQ has a cute side effect called cardiac arrest.
So anything you wish to drink bearing this chemical group, shouldnt be any stronger than a G&T.
Also, stop acting like the brain train stopped in to announce that you are the superior intellect of the planet. We all know thats reserved for Ollie. He tells me that every post in which he repeats three lines several times.

Dont be a putz , be your usual introspective yourself
izzythepush
 
  2  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 04:12 am
@McGentrix,
You should take copious amounts of this substance. Those people who died didn’t have enough faith, but you do.

That will show us.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  3  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 04:14 am
@farmerman,
Trump is now starting to act like Jim Jones. Now everything’s going tits up he’s selling his idiotic supporters poison so at least he’ll make a profit out of his presidency.
farmerman
 
  6  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 04:40 am
@izzythepush,
Im not againt HDCsulfate and other of that ilk .They have shown some anti-viral benefits.(You dont kill a virus you make the body more resistant till it burns itself out). McG turns everything to a "us v them" issue and starts sounding like Ollie a bit.

Trump should just keep his mouth shut about things he knows nothing. Had he just informed us as a "by the way". Noooo, he started a line of BS about HDC that just was not true, and two people , upon listening to his speech,took it in a goldfish bowl cleaner form and one of them died a painful death. (It turned out that the goldfish bowl cleaner had Oxalic acid in it and that probably caused ,or aided the lethality.
Also HDC has well known side effects that were disclosed during its past studies during the SARs epidemics. Cardiac Arrest is hardly a minor side effect. Pharma chemists can manipulate molcules so that what might bea dangerous but interesting drug, could be manipulated and modified to lose its toxicity. Trump is not exactly the one who should be giving that info because with him its obviously just some campaign spiehl.
Medical science has made some big discoveries by messing with all kinds of natural chemicals and even experimenting with known poisons. Look at Warfarin, its a rat poison .It acts as a "blood thinner" .Its now an old medicine for people with heart problems. Or, nitroglycerin. Maybe HDC has properties worth looking into. Making it some political statement (by anyone) while research is just beginning, is unhelpful.


farmerman
 
  5  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 04:49 am
@izzythepush,
I wish McG would have put that article into a simpl English to show how the actual benefits are a study on what we call "parallel functions" Without etailed looking at associated effects in blood chemistry and side effects, we may be either missing a promising med because of thie dumb political hijacking or missing some toxic side effects because of political hijacking. Its gonna have to go through man repat studies and since it has alrady got a decent foundation of study (as well as the somewhat flawed French study where the stats were "misapplied").

I just wish everybody would jus keep quiet and let the studies go on unmolested by bickering politics or by bandstanding politicians and his opponents.
izzythepush
 
  3  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 04:54 am
@farmerman,
Verbosity is the usual response when their nonsense is pointed out. If they had to use plain English they’d have to admit to being wrong.
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  4  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 05:00 am
@farmerman,
Quote:
Trump should just keep his mouth shut about things he knows nothing.

Exactly. Although it's temperamentally impossible for him to do this, all he had to say is that we have scientists in the USA and around the world who are diligently working to develop clinical treatments and preventive vaccines. Hawking one particular (as yet unproven) treatment isn't his job.
Quote:
McG turns everything to a "us v them" issue...

Yeah, I've noticed.
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  5  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 05:08 am
Somebody wrote:
All that hilariously misguided and counterproductive criticism the media piled on chloroquine (purely for political reasons) as a viable treatment will now go down as the biggest Fake News blunder to rule them all. The media actively engaged their activism to fight ‘bad orange man’ at the cost of thousands of lives.

I doubt that the medical scientists looking into chloroquine are the least bit influenced by the media shitstorm. I haven't seen anyone saying that the drug shouldn't be researched, only that Trump should stop promoting it. Nor have I seen any indication that there's been a cost of "thousands of lives" because an as yet non-existent treatment hasn't been employed.
McGentrix
 
  -3  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 07:27 am
@farmerman,
Chloroquine is not an anti-viral. But, what it does do is fight against the affects of what COVID does to the body. According to the research thus far, and we probably could have learnt this sooner had China been more forth coming, is that Hemoglobin in red blood cells (RBC) is getting blocked by the virus. That means the RBC isn't carrying Oxygen which is really one of its primary functions. Without O2 your body will start to shut down and go into a coma. This causes hospitals to put people on respirators and ventilators which force O2 into the lungs.

Chloroquine is used to fight malaria because malaria has similar effects of blocking Hemoglobin functions due to a parasitic infection. So really, why they are looking at is to fight the side effects of the virus, not to treat the virus itself. If we can keep RBC's carrying O2 then the need for respirators diminishes while the body fights off the virus itself or we find an actual anti-viral drug that works.

Without the scientific papers and research showing this, who here would believe what I say above? Instead I would get called whatever name Izzy can come up with and the thread gets voted down without anyone reading it. Showing the science behind it is how I get people like you, who I respect and enjoy conversing with to stop and discuss it.
izzythepush
 
  2  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 07:32 am
@McGentrix,
The science is inconclusive, more needs to be done. It’s not a panacea, it’s a work in progress.

Don’t blame China for your useless president’s stupidity.

Why haven’t you taken chloroquine, too scared to put your money where your mouth is?
0 Replies
 
maxdancona
 
  -1  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 07:42 am
I support McGentrix on this one (as he already noted). The political left has taken this too far as seen on the other thread. If we all agree now that choloruine should be studied by scientists, and that any decisions made should be based on the facts... then McGentrix has done his job.

I am no fan of Trump. I think he is a crappy president in no way up to the task of leading.

Blaming Trump because people are eating fish tank cleaner is a bit of a stretch, don't you think?
Setanta
 
  4  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 07:53 am
@hightor,
Plump is not going to stop promoting the drug, he's heavily invested in a company that produces it.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  3  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 07:57 am
@maxdancona,
maxdancona wrote:

I support McGentrix If we all agree now that choloruine should be studied by scientists, and that any decisions made should be based on the facts... then McGentrix has done his job.


You support all of Trump’s supporters.

McGentrix has done nothing. Nobody has said that chloroquine shouldn’t be studied.

Actually that’s a lie because the likes of McGentrix, Trump and yourself are saying we don’t need anymore studies because it’s a cure.

When people die because they follow the presidents advice and kill themselves the president is at fault.

You say Trump is a crappy president then bend over backwards to excuse his mistakes and blame everyone else.

You’re not fooling anyone.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  3  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 08:05 am
@maxdancona,
If you consider Boris Johnson to be part of the political left you really are a simple minded fascist.

There’s a tv station called OAN, I think it stands for one aryan nation or something like that. It looks like it was tailor made for you.
0 Replies
 
maxdancona
 
  -1  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 08:27 am
Whether you like Trump or not, having the two extremes line up on their respective sides and throw **** at each other doesn't do anyone any good.

I call them like I see them.... when the extreme left suggest that Trump "gave advice" to people that they should eat fish tank cleaner, it is the left that is going off the deep end.

Things would be better if they would hold their own side accountable for sticking with the facts.
izzythepush
 
  4  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 08:46 am
@maxdancona,
Your concept of extreme left is what most people would consider centre right.

That’s how fascists think. It’s also why you constantly take the side of the likes of Oralloy, Livinglava etc. etc.

Certain drugs used in the treatment of HIV have also been found to have some effect against the Coronavirus. You don’t hear Trump banging on about them though because, unlike chloroquine, Trump doesn’t have a financial interest in them.

And no, I’m not saying everyone should start taking HIV drugs, I’m saying they should be researched adequately.

For someone who goes on and on about science you don’t seem to have a clue about how scientists operate. They’ve been studying, and continue to study, the effectiveness of all drugs, vaccines and treatments in dealing with the pandemic. That was the case before McGentrix started this silly little thread.

You’re another right wing extremist trying to paint themselves as a moderate, and failing.
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  4  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 09:22 am
@McGentrix,
That page posted at the outset was from a non QA'd site. The haem chemistry was a bit off but that's neither here nor there. I think my point was that both sides are politicizing , so McG may be searching for purchase so his accusations at DEMS (as well as Maxwells) dont lose a foothold.

Other than that, Im not going to be arguing multi valent state . chemistry . Fact is, one person is critical and another dead from self dosing the compound (mixed with other toxins including oxalic acid). That could have been avoided by just some
0 Replies
 
farmerman
 
  3  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 09:33 am
@McGentrix,
PS I never called HDC an anti-viral. I said it had anti viral effects and then tried to explain very simply what we (pharmacologically) train the body to do is avoid the biochem effects that the virus does and we try to keep it serving life until the virus plays out. The same thing was discovered in that universally treating the high fever was also not a good thing in this infection.
Oh yeh, remember malaria is not a viral infection, its etymology is quite different than covid19 or all the others.
Its anti viral effects are based upon pat reserch on SARs and some minor successes of which its still inconclusive.
I think the research here should be continued with a great deal of STFU.
0 Replies
 
maxdancona
 
  -1  
Wed 8 Apr, 2020 10:38 am
I suppose there are two definitions the word "extremist"

Definition 1: An extremist is someone who evaluates any claim based on evidence. Sometimes they agree with one political party. Sometimes they agree with the other party. When people on their "side" are wrong, they hold them accountable. Sometimes they disagree with people in their own party.

Definition 2: An extremist is someone who holds to one party and one set of political ideologies. They demand purity. They label anyone who disagrees with any part of their ideology as an enemy (or a "fascist"). They reject any fact or evidence that calls their beliefs into question.

Izzy is using definition 1. I subscribe to definition 2.

I am proud of the fact that sometimes I agree with Izzy and sometimes with Oralloy.
 

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