Costa Rica will begin this week with the human testing period of the equine serum created to treat patients with Covid-19. For this process, 26 patients hospitalized for Covid-19 have already been chosen who will be voluntarily treated with the serum from horse plasma. This was revealed by the executive president of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS), Román Macaya, on August 31st.
“We will start this week, there is a lot of detail, and they are interventional investigations where we are applying a treatment developed in the country with patients. This is a historic process since this treatment was created in a matter of two months by experts from the Clodomiro Picado Institute (ICP) of the University of Costa Rica (UCR).
“It already has the approval of the Central Scientific Ethics Committee of the Fund,” stated the official, indicating that the people in charge of the process and the entire team “have been running” and “working all weekend” to achieve the prompt application.
Macaya said that at this moment administrative measures and steps are in the process that must be fulfilled and added that multiple extraordinary sessions have been held to achieve the start of human tests this week.
The head of the CCSS said that once the treatment is started, the results will be in “a few weeks” and will allow us to observe in detail the evolution of the patients to whom this therapy will be applied.
Costa Rican Scientific creation
The equine serum created at the Clodomiro Picado Institute had already passed the validation carried out at the Gearge Mason University in the United States and, after the approval of the Scientific Ethics Committee of the Fund, it is possible to advance its application in patients.
Tests in humans
These patients will be divided into two groups (of 13 each) to test the two different types of solutions created. Its application will only be possible for hospitalized patients with severe symptoms.
Equine serum
The serum created with the plasma of horses will allow patients infected with Covid-19 to recover faster at least that is the intention of the experts and to know its result this stage of tests in humans will begin.
Its application will be exclusively for those infected with SARS-CoV-2 that are hospitalized and the function of the serum is to neutralize the virus before the outcome becomes complicated.
On August 11th, the Fund reported that it had received the first 80 bottles of the treatment and these will now be applied. The UCR experts created two types of serum, one that neutralizes a single Coronavirus protein and the other neutralizes three proteins. Each of these solutions will be applied to 13 patients (26 in total).
This treatment is similar to the one developed by the same Institute (Clodomiro Picado) for treatments against snake bites: it uses powerful horse antibodies to neutralize the Coronavirus in the cells of the body.
