Shreveport Clinical Trial Reports Good News

Good news in the fight against COVID-19. Researchers at the LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport say the first round of results from a clinical trial look quite positive. The local doctors have been testing the effects of nitric oxide on patients with the virus. This is part of an international student with more than 250 patients enrolled. The early numbers show patients who got the nitric oxide therapy were able to breathe more easily and didn’t show any major side effects.

Doctor Keith Scott, who’s heading up the trials at LSU Health, says the newest results, released by Massachusetts General Hospital, shows that the colorless, odorless gas could actually help to kill the virus itself.
“It’s not the treatment. But it is certainly going to be a treatment. We’re very convinced of that,” Scott said.
Scott says he’s become more optimistic after months of administering nitric oxide to both severe and less severe coronavirus patients at LSU Health.
“It certainly is safe. That’s the one thing we’re seeing over and over again about this nitric oxide,” Scott said.
Through their research, involving Harvard Medical School and other universities across the country and world, they’re now trying to further prove that the gas can help kill the virus where it attacks patients the most.

The first results were received from a group of six pregnant women with coronavirus who inhaled the gas in very high doses.
“The reason we do that is not only does it improve oxygen flow to the lungs. But it also has virucidal. It can actually kill the virus in the cells itself,” Scott said.

Between April and June, three of the six women delivered four babies, including a set of twins. Each infant tested negative for COVID-19 and remained healthy afterward. Five of the women also later tested negative for the virus at least twice.