In 2002, my husband and I became seriously ill after a vacation to Martha’s Vineyard. It took ten doctors and a year to discover the root cause: We’d been bitten by unseen ticks harboring the parasites that cause Lyme disease and babesiosis, a malaria-like disease.

Our road to recovery was grueling, requiring five years of intermittent antimicrobial treatments. Later, I discover that my situation wasn’t all that uncommon. About one in five Lyme patients continue to suffer from ongoing symptoms after being treated with the recommended course of antibiotics. After that experience, it was abundantly clear that we need better treatments.

That’s why I was excited to hear about a study from Stanford Medicine researchers and their collaborators that provides evidence that the drug azlocillin eliminates the bacteria that cause Lyme disease at the onset of infection in lab mice and cultures.

Despite significant limitations, Viet Nam has defied expectations and is tackling the spread of coronavirus. Here’s how.

Two coronavirus patients in New York City are off ventilators and out of intensive care after they received an experimental drug to treat HIV and breast cancer.

As the skyrocketing number of cases stretches city hospitals to the limit, doctors are racing to find out which drugs on the market or in development might help in fighting the infection.

The drug, leronlimab, is delivered by injection twice in the abdomen, the Daily Mail reported.

Just a quick update on a new study:

“Researchers found that half of the patients they treated for mild COVID-19 infection still had coronavirus for up to eight days after symptoms disappeared.”

“If you had mild respiratory symptoms from COVID-19 and were staying at home so as not to infect people, extend your quarantine for another two weeks after recovery to ensure that you don’t infect other people,” recommended corresponding author Lixin Xie, MD, professor, College of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing.

Actemra (tocilizumab) – an interleukin-6 inhibitor – has already been approved in China for the treatment of patients infected with the novel coronavirus disease, who have developed serious lung damage and also have elevated levels of IL-6 in the blood.

It was first cleared by the FDA as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and has also subsequently been approved in juvenile idiopathic arthritis, giant cell arteritis and CRS associated with CAR-T cell therapies for cancer.

Plans to initiate trial in early April.