Traditional Chinese medicine combined with recombinant interferon to alleviate symptoms of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia

Objectives: Collect and analyze the basic information, symptoms, therapeutic method and therapeutic effect of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infected pneumonia patients in the hospital in northern Henan Province from January 2020 to April 2020, to provide evidences for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia. Methods: The information of patients of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia in the hospital were collected and analyzed, including the admission time, the discharge time, therapeutic method, and therapeutic effect after treatment. Results: A total of 10 cases patients of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia were collected, there were 5 male patients and 5 female patients, the age ranged from 16-54 years old and the average age was 34.2 years old; the body temperature of 6 cases patients were higher than 37°C when they were admitted to hospital; CT results showed that all the patients had infectious lesions of both lungs, and the results of nucleic acid test were positive. 5 million (aerosol inhalation) recombinant interferon (Lopinavir/Ritonavir or Lopinavir/Ritonavir/Abidol) combined with traditional Chinese medicine could alleviate effectively symptoms of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia within a month, the body temperature of patients returned to normal, respiratory symptoms improved significantly, COVID-19 nucleic acid test was negative, and results of lung imaging was also normal. Conclusion: Lopinavir/Ritonavir or Lopinavir/Ritonavir/Abidol combined with Traditional Chinese medicine has a good effect on relieving the symptoms of COVID-19 infected pneumonia and has significance for clinical treatment or clinic remission of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia.


Introduction
COVID-19 infectious pneumonia has been rapidly spread from Wuhan city to the whole China and to every corner of the world since it was discovered in Wuhan from December 2019.So far, it has mutated several times, which has seriously affected the daily life and health of people in the world, and the number of infections has reached the highest in history [1,2] .COVID-19 infectious pneumonia is characterized by high pathogenicity, spreads rapidly and is prone to mutation.The infected patients often have higher body temperature, fever, dry cough, fatigue; CT results show pulmonary infectious lesions and the results of nucleic acid tests are positive [3,4,5,6] .So far, there is no ideal therapeutic methods for COVID-19 infectious pneumonia treatment.
The clinical drugs of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia have been reported mainly include protease inhibitors (ritonavir, oseltamivir, darunavir, and lopinavir) [7,8] , RNA-dependent RNA polymerase [9,10,11,12] , these drugs have various side effects in the treatment of COVID-19 patients [13] , or the therapeutic effect is poor when used alone or in combination with two kind of different drugs [14] .For this purpose, This article provided a novel treatment through summarizing the data of 10 COVID-19 patients who came to our hospital in North Henan Province, collecting and analyzing the basic information and clinical treatment, and found that when using Lopinavir/Ritonavir or Lopinavir/Ritonavir/Abidol interferon, combination of traditional Chinese medicine had better therapeutic effect in the treatment of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia.

General information of patients
A total of 10 effective COVID-19 patients were collected in this report.There were 5 males and 5 females, aged from 16-54 years old, and the average age was 34.2 years old; there were 8 cases of patients with Wuhan contact history, after using Lopinavir/Ritonavir or Lopinavir/Ritonavir/Abidol interferon, combination of Chinese traditional medicine, the symptoms of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia disappeared within one month, the detail showed at Table 1.Traditional Chinese medicine.fever and basic symptoms of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia disappeared, the body temperature returned to normal, CT results was normal, and nucleic acid detection was negative for two times, but detection of WBC (white blood cell), RBC (Red blood cell), Hemoglobin (HGB) and platelet (PLT) were no obvious changes before treatment and after treatment (Table 3).

Table 1 .
Summary the basic information of 10 cases of COVID-19 patients in North Henan Province 3. Therapeutic method10 cases of COVID-19 infectious pneumonia patients were treated with Lopinavir/Ritonavir or Lopinavir/Ritonavir/Abidol combined with traditional Chinese medicine to relieve symptoms.The main treatment process was to inject 5 million units of r Lopinavir/Ritonavir or Lopinavir/Ritonavir/Abidol to inhibit COVID-19 virus, combined with various traditional Chinese medicines to improve the immunity of COVID-19 patients or relieve the symptoms of COVID-19 patients, and every patient had different kinds of traditional Chinese medicines for use (Table2).

Table 2 .
Summary of treatment methods for 10 cases of COVID-19 patients in North Henan Province

Table 3 .
Comparison of symptoms of 10 cases of New COVID-19 infected pneumonia patients before and after treatment