Coronavirus Treatment: Ultra Low-Dose Radiation Therapy Might Help Severely Ill COVID-19 Patients

Low-dose chest radiation given in a single treatment could reduce lung inflammation in severely ill COVID-19 patients. This could be sufficient to wean them off ventilators or even avoid it altogether, according to the experts at Ohio State University.

The radiation therapy works to offset the cytokine storm that occurs in some COVID-19 patients. During a cytokine storm, the body begins attacking its own cells and tissues instead of warding off the invading virus.

The team of experts at the Ohio State University led by Arnab Chakravarti, MD, is currently leading two different clinical trials to demonstrate the effectiveness of radiation therapy as a treatment for COVID-19. Chakravarti is also the Klotz Family chair of cancer research at OSU's Comprehensive Cancer Center- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital.

Trial 1: They will be testing radiation therapy on COVID-19 patients who are already on ventilator support.

Trial 2: They will be giving radiation therapy treatment to those COVID-19 patients on oxygen.

"Radiation at these low doses usually doesn't have a direct antiviral effect. But it does reduce inflammation. And when the inflammation is reduced, the acute effects of the byproducts of pneumonia also subside," Chakravarti told Medscape Medical News.

The experts at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute are also testing low-dose radiation therapy to treat COVID-19 patients. In their early analysis of five coronavirus patients treated with the therapy, three of them were taken off oxygen supplementation within a day of treatment. these patients were in the age group 64 to 94.

Several other researchers worldwide, including those from Italy, India, Iran, and Spain are also currently analyzing this treatment option, mentioned Medscape Medical News.

Radiation therapy was used during the 1918 influenza pandemic to treat flu-related viral pneumonia and has also been used to treat arthritis.

However, the dose for COVID-19 patients would be a little higher than that of a typical CT scan but lower than that of lung cancer treatment. At such low doses, radiation therapy would be safe for most patients.

“But it really should be done in a clinical trial," Chakravarti told Medscape Medical News.

Many radiation oncology experts believe that if these ultra-low doses of radiation therapy were effective against influenza-mediated viral pneumonia, it would do so for COVID-19-mediated pneumonia too.

The trial to be conducted in ventilated COVID-19 patients, named VENTED, would be done only at Ohio State University, with a target of including 24 patients. And the one which would be testing this treatment’s efficiency to prevent the need for ventilators named PREVENT would be done in nearly 21 different hospitals across the nation.