Low-Dose Radiation Therapy May Help COVID Patients By Kathleen Doheny

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https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200618/low-dose-radiation-therapy-may-help-covid-patients

 Low-dose chest radiation, usually given in a single treatment, may reduce inflammation in the lungs of severely ill COVID-19 patients enough to wean them off a ventilator or avoid it altogether. Several clinical trials of the treatment are underway or launching in the U.S. and elsewhere.

 

Chakravarti is leading two clinical trials -- one will test the treatment in patients already on a ventilator, and the other will give the treatment to patients on oxygen to try to prevent the need for a ventilator.

"Radiation at these low doses usually doesn't have a direct antiviral effect," he says. "But it does reduce inflammation. And when the inflammation is reduced, the acute [ill] effects of the byproducts of pneumonia also subside," says Chakravarti, who is also the Klotz Family chair of cancer research at OSU's Comprehensive Cancer Center -- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital.