DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE
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Josephine Bruzzese can breathe a deep sigh of relief this Mother’s Day, after her second-year CUNY Med School student-son, James, helped deliver the lung-inflammation treatment she needed to recover from COVID-19. The proud Brooklyn mom says her son is going to be a “one-of-a-kind doctor.”
A Brooklyn woman desperately ill with the coronavirus is breathing easy this Mother’s Day thanks to a novel treatment her medicalstudent son helped provide.
Josephine Bruzzese, who is 48 and otherwise healthy, woke up on March 22 with a fever, body aches, dry cough and trouble breathing. Her family rushed her to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn in Sunset Park.
“She was so short of breath she couldn’t speak,” said her 23-year-old son, James.
The hospital diagnosed the mom of four with pneumonia, but with no coronavirus tests available, it sent her home as a suspected COVID-19 case.
“We were very worried because she couldn’t stand up without almost passing out from shortness of breath,” her son said. “Her respiratory symptoms were very severe.”
James, who lives with his parents and three siblings in Bath Beach, is in his second year at the CUNY School of Medicine in a special program that combines a bachelor’s and medical degree.
He began his undergraduate studies in the seven-year program before another family member fell ill — his 16-yearold sister, Julia, who became sick in 2015 and was later diagnosed with Lyme disease.
With his mother ailing, James sprang into action, placing a call to a key ally — Dr. Richard Horowitz, a Lyme specialist in the Hudson Valley who had treated Julia and for whom James has interned.
“I gave him the entire rundown like I would do on rounds,” James said.
Horowitz suggested trying glutathione, an antioxidant produced by the liver that has been used to reduce inflammation in Lyme patients.
“When you get a viral infection with a huge amount of inflammation, you don’t have enough glutathione to be able to protect your very sensitive lung tissue,” Horowitz said.
James did not hesitate. After one 2,000-milligram dose, the family witnessed a miracle.
“Within an hour my breathing got better,” Josephine recalled. “It was amazing. I sat up, I got up.”
She took the pills for five days and did not relapse, her son said.
James wrote up his mother’s case for a study he and Horowitz co-authored on treating her and another patient, a Manhattan man in his 50s. It was published online in the journal Respiratory Medicine Case Reports.
“Within a half-hour it helped with the breathing symptoms in particular,” the second patient told The Post.
James said he has been spreading the word about the promising treatment, posting the study on social media and e-mailing it to his professors, some of whom are working on the front lines.
Dr. Purvi Parikh, an infectious-disease, allergy and immunology specialist at NYU Langone Hospital, said that glutathione may help calm the immune system’s overreaction to the coronavirus, known as a “cytokine storm,” but that more study was needed.