Royal Papworth Hospital joins national trial to find COVID-19 treatment

Royal Papworth Hospital has recruited its first patients to the national RECOVERY Trial for coronavirus.

The trial is attempting to identify treatments that might be beneficial for adults who have been hospitalised with COVID-19.

Led by the University of Oxford, there are over 100 hospitals across the UK currently signed-up to participate.

Royal Papworth Hospital has already recruited seven patients to the study thanks to the hard work of the research and development team.

A range of potential, exisiting treatments for other conditions have been suggested for COVID-19 but nobody knows if any of them will turn out to be more effective in helping people recover than the usual standard of hospital care which all patients will receive.

The RECOVERY Trial will begin by testing some of these suggested treatments:

· Lopinavir-Ritonavir (anti-viral treatment more commonly used to treat HIV)

· Low-dose Dexamethasone (a type of steroid, which is used in a range of conditions typically to reduce inflammation).

· Hydroxychloroquine (related to an anti-malarial drug)

Data from the trial will be regularly reviewed so that any effective treatment can be identified quickly. The RECOVERY Trial team will also constantly review information on new drugs and the ‘adaptive’ design of the study allows for new promising treatments to be included in the trial.

Dr Robert Rintoul, Principal Investigator for RECOVERY at Royal Papworth Hospital, said: “We are delighted to be participating in this important national research effort to try and identify new effective treatments for COVID-19 as quickly as possible. Research and development teams at Royal Papworth and many other hospitals in the East of England and beyond have worked around the clock to set up and open this study so quickly.”

This trial is supported by a grant to the University of Oxford from UK Research and Innovation/National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and by core funding provided by NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, Wellcome,  the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Department for International Development, Health Data Research UK, the Medical Research Council Population Health Research Unit, and NIHR Clinical Trials Unit Support Funding.

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