Skip to main content

Monoclonal Antibodies: How to Get Them, Plus a New Version


Regeneron/Ronapreve

Call 211 (in the US)

I've heard anecdotes from people who had a hard time getting an appointment for monoclonal antibodies. A city councilor here in Indianapolis recently had to be persistent and get a friend's doctor to intervene to get an appointment an hour's drive away. The news station he talked to advises readers to call 211 (in the US) to find the nearest facility that can treat you. If you're in Florida, you can just go to a Regeneron center. In Europe, it's called Ronapreve and different conditions apply for receiving treatment.

Monoclonal antibodies are for COVID-positive patients with mild to moderate symptoms who are at high risk of progression of the illness. They need to be administered within ten days of onset of symptoms. They can also be administered to people who are at high risk of catching COVID. Again--different conditions might apply outside the US.

Efficacy Against Omicron?

Regeneron says its monoclonal antibodies have "diminished potency against Omicron, [but] they are active against Delta, which currently is the most prevalent variant in the US." 

Evusheld

Evusheld is a new monoclonal antibody for prevention of COVID in immunocompromised patients or people who have a history of severe adverse reactions to COVID vaccines or their ingredients. The FDA has given it Emergency Use Authorization. Note that there were significantly higher rates of cardiovascular adverse events (e.g., heart attacks and heart failure) compared to placebo in the clinical trial. It has efficacy against the Omicron variant (see this also).

Contact your health care provider for more information.

Photo from Pexels.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Long-Term Experience Eating Safe (and Other) Starches

Years ago, before the Perfect Health Diet came out, I followed a program that involved eating quite a bit "safe starch." It was called Body for Life. It involved eating six small servings of carbohydrate along with six small servings of protein, plus two servings of fibrous vegetables per day. (A serving was the size of your fist or the palm of your hand.) There were six workouts a week (three weightlifting, three cardio) and one free day every week where you ate whatever you wanted and didn't exercise. In all fairness, these two programs are different: BFL allows certain grains, legumes and low-fat dairy and discourages fat. It doesn't call for a wheelbarrow full of vegetation. Nevertheless, my experience eating lots of fruit and lots of starch is relevant to the PHD because the amount and type of digestible carbohydrates are similar, and for the first few years, I didn't eat wheat except on free days. At first on BFL, I felt great. Before, I was continually...
17 comments
Read more

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...
24 comments
Read more

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...
15 comments
Read more