An Aigburth man is "giving something back" to the NHS after it's "done so much" for him.
Tony Brown, 60, put himself forward for a "vital" research trial at Clatterbridge Cancer Centre despite not being a patient there. After two kidney transplants due to an inherited condition that's led to two heart attacks and two hip replacements, Tony's immune system is compromised.
Roughly half a million people in the UK have weakend immune systems because of cancer, kidney transplants or other serious health conditions. Some, like Tony, remain at high risk of severe illness from coronavirus, despite repeated vaccinations.
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A study published by Dr Lance Turtle, a reader in infectious diseases at the University of Liverpool, this week found immunocompromised people are 44% more likely to die from covid than people with normal immune systems if hospitalised.
This risk stops people with weakened immune systems from engaging in otherwise simple parts of life, like going to the shop. Research at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre could change that if a new therapy is found to better protect immunocompromised people from the virus.
Tony said: "If I get COVID, it won’t be very good for me and I saw this clinical trial online and decided I wanted to take part. Hopefully, it will do some good, for me but also other people who don't have a good immune system."
He added: “The NHS has done so much for me over the years, with all the treatment I have had, so I also wanted to do something for them. To help out in some way. Being on this trial is me giving something back."
Tony is one of 350 participants who will be recruited across the UK for the RAPID-PROTECTION study. They'll all receive an injection of Evusheld - an antibody treatment used for preventing Covid-19 infection - with a Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccination - four weeks later.
They'll then have regular blood tests over the course of the following year to assess antibodies and levels of immune protection. Professor Christian Ottensmeier, director of clinical research at Clatterbridge, is its principal investigator on the study, which is sponsored by the Centre for Trials Research at Cardiff University, and led by Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) NHS Foundation Trust, in collaboration with the University of Oxford.
Prof Ottensmeier said: "We are delighted to be working with our colleagues in Oxford and Cardiff on this vital research, which is very important for our patients here at Clatterbridge. Covid certainly has not gone away and this clinical research trial could help to develop a treatment that prevents serious illness in immunocompromised patients if they catch it. We are also grateful to Tony personally for coming forward to help with this research."
Evusheld is a combination of two long-acting antibodies that bind to the spike protein on the outside of the virus and prevents the virus from entering human cells. Clinical trials have shown it to prevent Covid-19 infection for up to a year after a single dose of two infections, giving protection within a few hours, according to Clatterbridge.
Unlike vaccines, it doesn't depend on a healthy immune system to give protective. Evusheld is effective against the Omicron variant, but it's not yet known how long this protection lasts.
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