First-of-Its-Kind Rapid Test Could Identify Which COVID-19 Patients Are Responding to Drug Treatments

Studies are now showing that drugs known as corticosteroids reduce the risk of death in critically ill COVID-19 patients by one-third. In spite of the promise of these drugs, though, clinicians still have concerns about their potential side effects. Corticosteroids work by dampening the activity of a patient's immune system to prevent it from attacking and damaging the lungs. Clinicians therefore worry that prescribing these drugs either too early or at too high a dosage could worsen a patient's condition by hindering the body's ability to clear the virus.

A team of researchers have now demonstrated that MeMed's 15-minute blood test for the protein interferon gamma induced protein 10 (IP-10) could help guide treatment with corticosteroids. Using this test, the researchers measured IP-10 levels twice a day over the course of a month in 52 SARS-CoV-2 positive patients, 26 of whom developed severe COVID-19. This revealed that severe patients had very high median IP-10 levels (1,190 pg/mL) compared to the median IP-10 levels of the non-severe group (328 pg/mL). In 17 of the severe patients treated with corticosteroids, though, median IP-10 levels fell from 2,961 pg/mL to 372 pg/mL within 3-5 days. Only two of these patients eventually died of COVID-19-related complications, and both of them exhibited IP-10 flare-ups of >1,000 pg/mL after initiation of corticosteroids.

"Our findings show that IP-10 testing could be used to identify patients who are not responding to standard corticosteroid regimens and who need more aggressive treatment - something that physicians were afraid to resort to before, because they didn't know what effect it would have," said Dr. Tahel Ilan Ber, MD, who led the study.

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