StemCell Therapy

A local hospital is using a little-known medicine to treat COVID-19 patients after the FDA authorized compassionate use approval to administer the drug.

Landmark Hospital of Athens treated two patients with its first doses of the medicine last week, according to a press release from Landmark Hospitals, which operates six long-term acute-care hospitals in the Southeast, including its Athens hospital on Sunset Drive.

The medicine, called Organicell Flow, is a biologic product derived from amniotic fluid, which contains stem cells. Amniotic fluid is the protective fluid in the sac containing growing fetuses.

Landmark is providing the product to patients with advanced COVID-19 conditions, according to the company.

After receiving Organicell Flow intravenously last week, the two patients were clinically stable as of Wednesday, according to Landmark.

Organicell Regenerative Medicine of Boca Raton, Fla., manufactures the medicine from human amniotic fluid voluntarily donated during Cesarean section surgeries, according to Landmark.

Developed to promote wound healing, Organicell Flow contains more than 300 growth factors, cytokines and chemokines, as well as hyaluronic acid and exosomes, according to the press release.

The medicine can modulate a patients immune response. In some COVID-19 patients, their supercharged immune response can be as harmful as the actual coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The condition, called cytokine storm syndrome, can damage lungs and other organs and can lead to death, said Landmark Hospitals Chairman Dr. William Kapp.

The data collected from the patients receiving compassionate use treatments will guide us to interventions that modulate COVID-19 immune response in the lungs and reduce systemic organ damage, Kapp said in Landmarks press release.

Organicell Flow is one of a number of medicines health providers around the world are trying out to treat COVID-19, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives in the United States so far and nearly 2,000 in Georgia.

Two other Athens hospitals have also recently received shipments of another drug that may help patients with COVID-19, remdesivir.

Gov. Brian Kemp announced earlier this week that the state was distributing more than 18,000 vials of remdesivir to more than 80 Georgia hospitals, enough to treat nearly 17,000 patients. The hospitals include Athens St. Marys Healthcare System and the Piedmont system that includes Piedmont Athens Regional and several other Georgia hospitals.

Remdesivir is being used to treat patients with serious symptoms such as low oxygen levels or pneumonia, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health.

Developed to treat people with Ebola virus disease, remdesivir has been shown to shorten the time of recovery from COVID-19 illness in hospitalized patients, but in the absence of thorough studies is considered investigational.

Standard treatment for COVID-19 includes oxygen therapy, mechanical ventilation and medicine to maintain blood pressure.

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Athens hospital using biologic treatment on COVID-19 patients - Online Athens

This entry was posted on May 31, 2020 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Regenerative Medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |