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The coronavirus has now been very well researched, except for the genes sequenced.
However, the Covid-19 disease it triggers is still difficult to treat for medical professionals.
There is no drug that promises a cure.
Scientists are therefore testing in many studies which previously known means Covid-19 can take the horror.
Last summer, initial studies showed that the cortisone preparation dexamethasone can significantly improve survival rates for those affected.
But for a long time it was the only remedy that helped the patient.
Antibodies, the anti-virus remdesivir and all other hopes seemed to be of little help to their patients in the studies.
Additional drugs, such as anticoagulants, can only relieve those affected by symptoms.
But now one of the most important Covid-19 drug studies brings a small glimmer of hope.
Results of the recovery study, in which more than 10,000 people participated, were presented in the UK on Thursday.
More than 10,000 people took part in the UK recovery study
Source: REUTERS
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They suggest that the rheumatoid drug tocilizumab can save more people from a fatal course of Covid-19 than before.
What's more, if doctors give the drug dexamethasone in addition to the cortisone preparation, the rate of patients who need artificial respiration can even be reduced.
With tocilizumab plus the cortisone preparation, 33 percent of the treated intensive care patients were saved from death.
With dexamethasone alone, it's only 29 percent.
The principle of action of tocilizumab is simple.
It calms the immune system, which in many patients reacts too strongly to the pathogen in the late phase of the disease and thus becomes dangerous to them themselves.
Dexamethasone has a similar effect.
In contrast to the cortisone preparation, the rheumatoid drug is only directed against a very specific part of the immune system, the cytokine IL-6.
This messenger substance is released by individual defense cells in order to alert others and to position them against the pathogen.
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If the cytokine IL-6 is blocked, the self-damaging effect can be prevented.
It is actually approved for the treatment of the autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis, and it saves many patients pain and joint damage.
It was already suspected last spring that tocilizumab also works against the auto-aggressive immune cells in Covid 19 patients.
However, the first investigations have delivered rather mixed results.
Stefan Kluge, head of intensive care medicine at the Hamburg University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE), says: "There were four to five studies, some of them quite large, in which tocilizumab had no effect." It was also given to infected people in the hospital.
There had been no studies with dexamethasone with such devastating results.
This suggests that dexamethasone has a much stronger effect.
Stefan Kluge is one of the authors who regularly update the guideline for the treatment of Covid 19 patients according to the state of the art.
So far, he has only treated individual Covid-19 patients with the rheumatoid drug.
On the one hand, because it has not really convinced in previous studies, but also because it has only been approved for rheumatoid therapy so far.
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Another problem: the drug is very expensive.
A single dose costs around 2000 euros.
The result of another large tocilizumab study can be expected in the next few days, says Kluge.
Only then will he and his colleagues decide whether they would recommend the gift to other German intensive care doctors.
"At the moment we are not completely convinced of the means," he says.
In addition, he and his colleagues have not yet had the opportunity to study the corresponding data from the recovery study on tocilizumab in more detail.
So far, the publication has not yet been published in a specialist journal, so far there has only been an advance notice.
However, if the drug should hold up in further studies, which the results now published promise, he believes that the drug will soon also play a greater role in German intensive care units.