Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) is a technique utilized to diagnose lower respiratory tract illnesses. The premise is you basically put a tube in the lung, inject sterile saline and suction it back and now you have a specimen to diagnose infections, including covid19. When he said "inject it, into the lungs it could clean it" he may have been saying they are looking at a way to directly kill the virus in the lungs. While I've never heard of BAL being used therapeutically in this way, I don't pretend to know what the CDC or any government run research has shown. It could be theoretically possible to inject a "disinfectant" (not fucking bleach) but something that kills the virus, into the lungs to sterilize them. The virus is not only present in the lungs however. But, it's an interesting thought. It would have to be something absorbed by the lungs and that either inhibits viral replication or viral entry into the cell. Just some food for thought
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That was really thorough and informative thanks! It seems that such a targeted therapy would only serve to reduce/eliminate the activity of the virus in the trachea but not the lungs. Correct me if I am wrong but the primary place for the virus to reside is in the airways and lungs and the severity of symptoms is dependent on viral load, so reducing the viral load in that area could be quite beneficial.
Also, is it possible to find a specific range of wavelengths that only effect viruses? That way perhaps a patients blood could be circulated through a uv disinfecting machine without killing the beneficial stuff? Or are there viruses that are beneficial also.
And are you sure it takes 60 minutes to kill the infectivity of the virus? This seems quite dependent on the wavelength and amplitude of the radiation
Yes reducing the viral load is very crucial and is the cornerstone in the treatment of severe viruses such as HIV and hepatitis, and now this. As far as beneficial viruses, I'm pretty hard pressed to think of any, so if we did find a UVA wavelength that was viral specific, and didn't damage our own cells or cause cancer, that would be awesome! As far as filtering the blood with UV, again it's a tough one since the blood is made up of so many different things - red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, plasma, chemicals released by the cells, etc. If the UV light fucked the red blood cells up or the white blood cells or the rest of the immune system, that would be catastrophic. But I'm not sure what these effects would be, I would think it would be better to treat the lungs then give them medicine. But I'll try to find some literature.
As far as the 60 mins that's the direct quote from the research article, I haven't found other times, medicine is very dependent on having the research to back it up so I would say if you theoretically did this, 60 mins would be the minimum until proven otherwise "Viruses stayed stable at 4 degrees C, at room temperature (20 degrees C) and at 37 degrees C for at least 2 h without remarkable change in the infectious ability in cells, but were converted to be non-infectious after 90-, 60- and 30-min exposure at 56 degrees C, at 67 degrees C and at 75 degrees C, respectively. Irradiation of UV for 60 min on the virus in culture medium resulted in the destruction of viral infectivity at an undetectable level."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21058-w
Wavelengths in the far-UVC range (around 222nm) appear to be harmless to human tissue while effectively inactivating viruses. This could allow for the treatment to last much longer than an hour if true. If most of the virus is concentrated in the trachea then it seems this could be a very effective way to reduce viral load. I wonder how helpful this would be in practice though