The Covid hospital of Lomonosov Moscow State University worked for almost eight weeks – and showed amazing results: out of more than four hundred patients, including very severe ones, the specialists of this medical center could not save only four, despite the fact that in other hospitals the mortality rate fluctuates at the level of 15 percent or higher.
Moreover, they have developed their own treatment protocol, in fact overturning the generally accepted idea of how to raise those who have contracted the coronavirus to their feet.
Antibiotics against covid are useless...
- Simon Teymurazovich, the main question is why now, after the lockdown that we experienced in the spring, at the beginning of the pandemic, now that we seem to have already dealt with this "Wuhan infection", we are seeing both an increase in morbidity and increased fear in society. "The second wave" is what people say.
– First of all, let's look at the situation sensibly and objectively. Yes, we do see that recently there has been an increase in the number of people with positive test results for coronavirus. There are several reasons for this. First of all, both the number and sensitivity of PCR testing have increased significantly. Secondly, of course, the number of patients with COVID-19 is also increasing. But I think it is very important to emphasize here that a positive test does not mean that a person is sick, but only indicates that coronavirus RNA is detected in his upper respiratory tract during PCR examination. In fact, if each of us thoroughly study the microflora of the respiratory tract, then you can find a lot of conditionally pathogenic microorganisms that, under certain conditions, can cause serious infectious diseases. In the case of coronavirus, it is important to understand whether people with a positive PCR test result are contagious or not. I think that many of them may be safe for others, but there is still no clear answer to date. But it is known for sure that not all of them are sick or will get sick with COVID-19.
– But they are being pumped up from TV screens, restrictive measures are being tightened everywhere. People rushed to pharmacies, sweeping away antibiotics...
- Well, I repeat for the thousandth time: using antibiotics to treat COVID-19 is completely wrong. Firstly, they do not act on the coronavirus in any way and are not needed in the uncomplicated course of the disease. In rare cases, we prescribe antibiotics to high-risk patients – in order to prevent, I repeat: exclusively to prevent the possible addition of bacterial infection. These are patients with severe diabetes mellitus, with serious lung diseases, cancer patients with a pronounced decrease in immunity against cancer or chemotherapy. Or they are used in cases of confirmed bacterial complications against the background of coronavirus infection.
- Wait, only after all, doctors treat like this, and people are treated themselves...
– I can only state that regardless of whether the patient has a high risk of secondary infectious complications or has already developed viral-bacterial pneumonia, the schemes of antibacterial therapy used by both patients themselves and many of my colleagues are absolutely, I would even say, catastrophically wrong. It seems that we are dealing with antibiotics for the first time and do not know the most basic principles of their use. It gets to the point that some patients, like quite conscious and educated people, complain that they have been taking two or even three powerful antibiotics for a whole week, and for some reason the temperature does not decrease. Surprisingly, broad-spectrum antibiotics are prescribed, and several drugs are prescribed at once and in irrational combinations, schemes are invented that we have almost never used. I get the impression that, as if blindly, either those antibiotics are chosen that can be taken orally in the form of tablets for convenience (for example, azithromycin, which has become famous, but remains useless), or those with minimal side effects (the same ceftriaxone) that can be administered intramuscularly.
– Do you mean to say that today we see more "flowers", and "berries" will be much scarier?
– I want to say that this is the impending pandemic of antibiotic resistance (resistance to antibiotics. - Ed.), which will become an absolute reality in one and a half to two years, and will be a real problem: microbes will not go anywhere, and those sensitive to the same azithromycin, with which everything began, will no longer be. And this is much more serious than coronavirus or any other infection.
- So what's the conclusion?
- Firstly, antibiotics do not treat viral diseases, and secondly, it is unscientific to take two or three antibiotics for prophylactic purposes to a healthy person. Even if a patient develops a bacterial infection, we start treatment with one antibiotic - according to the clinical situation or the sensitivity of microorganisms. And these, I'm not afraid of the word, crazy combinations (and in doses never seen before, even patients are not treated with such quantities!) they are completely incomprehensible to me. Therefore, my advice is: stop taking antibiotics for no reason! It is also surprising that many "advanced" citizens are afraid to buy meat products with some meager amount of antibiotics, but at the same time they run to pharmacies and destroy their own health.
...as well as antiviral drugs
– As far as I know, in your clinic you refused even antiviral drugs. Is that true?
- So. When everything was just beginning and our clinic was repurposed to join the fight against coronavirus infection as a covid hospital, we analyzed all the information available at that time (and I'll tell you honestly: nothing has changed much since then) and came to very important conclusions, on the basis of which we built a treatment regimen. And they realized that at that time there was not a single drug in the world with confirmed antiviral activity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the one that causes COVID-19).
–Why not?" Various drugs were called in the press, people in white coats talked about treatment regimens and so on.
– They're still telling me. But only we proceeded from the fact that there was no real confirmation of their effectiveness. In addition, most of the proposed drugs have a fairly high toxicity. They affect the liver, heart, other organs and systems, which often excludes the appointment of many other, really necessary medications.
- Yes, but they practiced and, by the way, they still practice, no?
– This is true, but you must agree: after all, we almost never treat ARVI with antiviral drugs, as well as measles, rubella and even viral encephalitis. Actually, our ability to fight viral infections is quite limited. Yes, we have learned how to treat patients with HIV infection, severe forms of herpes infection, hepatitis C, and several other diseases. But the creation of medicines for these diseases took not years, but decades. It is difficult to cope with viruses, because, unlike bacteria, they are inside cells most of the time, and it is not easy to get there without harming the cell itself. Returning to covid, many are simply fixated on finding ways to fight the virus. In order not to waste time (or to "overtake" competitors), almost all drugs that have ever been used to treat diseases caused by RNA viruses have been tried and used (and are still being used) as potential antiviral drugs. We started with the drugs that we use to treat the disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, which almost immediately showed a complete lack of any effectiveness with a large number of side effects and drug interactions that make it difficult to use many other types of therapy.
– I read (and heard from doctors myself) that flu medications were also used...
- That's right. Then they remembered about the drugs against the influenza virus, in particular neuraminidase inhibitors, which have been used and are still being used, but they also demonstrated a complete lack of effect against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But they are still widely used. It's unclear why. Perhaps because of the false impression that since we cannot destroy the virus, we cannot cure the patient. Many people still think so. In our approach, we focused on the treatment of the disease itself – COVID-19.
The problem is not in the evil covid, but in our immunity
– In general, you decided to go the other way, right?
- Exactly. We considered that antiviral therapy was not needed, and focused on the treatment of the COVID-19 disease itself, without "touching" the virus. And we did it. Therefore, even now, while continuing to treat a large number of patients with COVID, the first thing I do is cancel any antiviral therapy prescribed to them and almost never use antibiotics.
– That's how they took it – and began to invent something of their own?
– In fact, we did not invent the bicycle – a lot of things were known for a long time, just for some reason everyone decided to forget about it. And we just analyzed the available data. After all, we are the medical center of the leading university of our country and the world, a real university clinic, a research center (and not a hospital for MSU employees, as some believe). Therefore, we studied the world experience accumulated by that time, conducted our own research (and continue this work) and came to several key conclusions on which our approach to treatment was based. For example, it was already clear at that time that COVID-19 was not a disease of the lungs or respiratory organs, but a systemic inflammatory disease, in the development of which a major role was assigned to a violation of the immune system.
– How is that so? No matter who you ask, everyone is sure that covid is just connected with the lungs.
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