HIV and Covid 19

[tallslenderguy]

i am beginning to wonder if those of us who are healthy and on HIV meds or PreP  may actually be at less risk from Covid 19?  

i'm a critical care nurse and have been working on a Covid unit, volunteering to take Covid + patients, since the first week of March.  i do not know (because testing was not available) but think i may have had Covid at the end of February.  i have also wondered if i have not fought it off several times since?  No way of knowing, it's all speculation on my part, but i have cared for Covid patients every other week since March, so i have been around Covid a lot. i did get an antibody test a month ago and i have no antibodies.  That does not necessarily mean i have not had Covid, it could just mean we do not maintain antibodies for long... we don't know. 

Meanwhile, some anti retroviral drugs used to treat HIV or for PreP are being studied and used to treat Covid, so i speculate that the meds i take may be helping protect me?  Wouldn't that be a cool and funny turn of events if gays have a better chance of beating Covid because of this?  Here's an article discussing some of the research on the topic:

[think before following links] https://www.poz.com/article/people-hiv-getting-covid19

[PozDaddy916]

There’s a Spanish study that has been recently released. You can find it on aidsmap.com. The study concludes that tenofovir has no effect on COVID-19 

I was disappointed since I was hopeful it prevented COVID or lessened symptoms 

 

 

[viking8x6]

I would not expect most of the HIV meds to have any significant effect on Covid-19.

I say that because Covid-19 copies its RNA directly to new RNA to reproduce, but HIV first makes a DNA copy of its RNA, inserts it into the human host cell's DNA, and then instructs the cell to make RNA copies of it. So none of the HIV meds that interfere with the replication of its genetic material (which includes NRTIs like tenofovir and emtricitabine) are particularly likely to inhibit the RNA processing in COVID. Not to say that they can't - DNA and RNA are fairly similar, after all - but they are far less likely to do so than drugs that are intended to inhibit RNA-RNA copying, such as Favipiravir (developed to treat influenza): [think before following links] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favipiravir

 

[tallslenderguy]

Thanks for the comments guys.  This disease is only about a year old in study terms, though it has received a lot of attention this last year. i had one patient this weekend who is Covid poz and part of a double blind test the hospital where i work is conducting... the med is Leronlimab.  We also use a lot of remdesivir.  

So far from what i am seeing (purely anecdotal, subjective observation on the front line here), the meds that blunt cytokine response syndrome seem to be having effect. Time and a lot more research will eventually tell.

[Pozgoat2]

You are a true fucking hero. I can't answer any of your questions but people like you need to be honored.

 

Front-line medical workers are real heroes!!

These folks risk their lives to save others!

[Close2MyBro]

For a while they had looked at the impact Edurant had on suppressing the virus and it appeared to have a positive effect. They also found that the antihistamine Azelastine was effective at slowing and/or blocking the replication of covid.