According to him Dr. Alejandro Fernandez-Montero, a specialist in Occupational Medicine at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra, “the results correspond to the trial that we started in January 2022 to reduce the time of contagion by Covid. Indeed, we have seen that nasal photodisinfection safely reduces contagion capacity by more than 70% and, furthermore, this is the first trial to study the immunological behavior of this therapy against Covid-19”.
The test uses three different measurement techniques to check the contagion capacity of patients: “An antigen test, a PCR and an intro analysis carried out at Cima in which, exposing a group of recently cultured cells to material extracted from the pharyngeal mucosa of the patients, we analyzed the replication capacity of the virus”, explains Dr. Fernández-Montero. “Thus we have verified that the cells exposed to the material of the group treated with photodynamic therapy expressed a lower genetic load of Covid-19 than the control group.”
In addition to measuring contagiousness, the trial had a second objective: analyze, for the first time, the immunological reaction to the virus -at that time, the Omicron variant-, since cellular immunity can prevent or significantly reduce the risk of a new contagion developing into pneumonia or another serious illness that may require hospitalization.
Dr. Fernández-Montero explains that “As time goes by, the person loses antibodies and the cellular immunity developed against the virus is reduced, but we have seen that this loss slowed down significantly in patients treated with NASA photodisinfection.l, which means that, in the event of a new infection, even in the face of a new variant, this therapy would help prevent serious disease.”
Most of the patients treated with photodynamic therapy had the complete vaccination schedule and did not experience any serious adverse effects during treatment. The Clínica Universidad de Navarra is running another clinical trial to observe the effects of nasal photodisinfection in patients with severe Covid-19 disease.
Photodisinfection technology using photodynamic therapy is a painless process that destroys the reservoir of Covid-19 in the nasal passages, where the replication of the virus is more active during the first days. In this way, the patient ceases to be a transmitting agent of the infection to other people in the short term after treatment.
