NEW STUDY SHOWS MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES PREVENT COVID INFECTION

A study in US nursing homes has shown for the first time that monoclonal antibodies, mass-produced in a laboratory, can protect people from developing symptomatic COVID-19, Jon Cohen reported for Science.

Their manufacturer, Eli Lilly, hopes these antibodies will provide an additional way to protect people at risk of serious disease from the pandemic coronavirus. But given the success of COVID-19 vaccines and their increasing availability, it’s not clear that the expensive and somewhat cumbersome intervention will be widely used.

Both Eli Lilly’s monoclonal antibody and a similar two-antibody cocktail from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals—famously used to treat former US President Donald Trump in October 2020—have already received emergency use authorization (EUA) as a therapeutic for those who have become infected and are at high risk of developing severe COVID-19.

So far, they are not widely used because they must be given early in infection and infused in a hospital or clinic.

But now that they appear effective at preventing even mild disease, Eli Lilly plans to ask the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand the EUA to include use as a preventive.

In the new study, nearly 1000 people who lived or worked in U.S. nursing homes received either a single infusion of Eli Lilly’s antibody—containing four times the dose used for therapeutic purposes—or a placebo.

The company announced that the antibody reduced the risk of becoming ill with COVID-19 in the following 8 weeks by 57%. Among nursing home residents, who made up about one-third of the trial participants, the risk of COVID-19 illness dropped by 80%. Only four COVID-19–related deaths occurred in the study, and all were in nursing home residents in the placebo group.

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