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New Antiviral Drug Completely Suppresses SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Within 24 Hours

AHA Publisher — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 08:00:05 +0000

Georgia State University via News-Medical Net – Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection with a new antiviral drug, MK-4482/EIDD-2801 or Molnupiravir, completely suppresses virus transmission within 24 hours, researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University have discovered. The group led by Dr. Richard Plemper, Distinguished University Professor at Georgia State, originally discovered that the drug is potent against influenza viruses. This is the first demonstration of an orally available drug to rapidly block SARS-CoV-2 transmission. MK-4482/EIDD-2801 could be game-changing.” Dr. Richard Plemper, Distinguished University Professor, Georgia State University Interrupting widespread community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 until mass vaccination is available is paramount to managing COVID-19 and mitigating the catastrophic consequences of the pandemic. Because the drug can be taken by mouth, treatment can be started early for a potentially three-fold benefit: inhibit patients’ progress to severe disease, shorten the infectious phase to ease the emotional and socioeconomic toll of prolonged patient isolation and rapidly silence local outbreaks. “We noted early on that MK-4482/EIDD-2801 has broad-spectrum activity against respiratory RNA viruses and that treating infected animals by mouth with the drug lowers the amount of shed viral particles by several orders of magnitude, dramatically reducing transmission,” said Plemper. “These properties made MK-4482/EIDD/2801 a powerful candidate for pharmacologic control of COVID-19.” In the study published in Nature Microbiology, Plemper’s team repurposed MK-4482/EIDD-2801 against SARS-CoV-2 and used a ferret model to test the effect of the drug on halting virus spread. “We believe ferrets are a relevant transmission model because they readily spread SARS-CoV-2, but mostly do not develop severe disease, which closely resembles SARS-CoV-2 spread in young adults,” said Dr. Robert Cox, a postdoctoral fellow in the Plemper group and a co-lead author of the study. The researchers infected ferrets with SARS-CoV-2 and initiated treatment with MK-4482/EIDD-2801 when the animals started to shed virus from the nose. “When we co-housed those infected and then treated source animals with untreated contact ferrets in the same cage, none of the contacts became infected,” said Josef Wolf, a doctoral student in the Plemper lab and co-lead author of the study. By comparison, all contacts of source ferrets that had received placebo became infected. If these ferret-based data translate to humans, COVID-19 patients treated with the drug could become non-infectious within 24 hours after the beginning of treatment. MK-4482/EIDD-2801 is in advanced phase II/III clinical trials against SARS-CoV-2 infection. To read the original article click here.

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What’s the World’s Favorite Fizzy Drinks Maker Doing Fighting Covid?

AHA Publisher — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 07:00:57 +0000

Abigail Klein Leichman via Israel21c – Back in March, Hadassah University Medical Center intensive care physician Dr. Akiva Nachshon saw that some European countries lacked enough ventilators for seriously ill Covid-19 patients. Proper breathing support for mild and moderate patients could prevent Israel from facing a similar situation, he reasoned. However, the slow-oxygen nasal inhalation therapy devices that do the job best are in short supply because they cost about $15,000 (excluding consumables). Nachshon’s biomedical engineer friend Shlomo Friedman suggested enlisting the help of Israeli carbonated drink machine maker SodaStream. “They understand thermodynamics, gases and physics, and they have the necessary R&D infrastructure,” Friedman told Nachshon. That’s what led to Stream02, an inexpensive alternative recently tested successfully at Hadassah’s Ein Kerem campus in Jerusalem. The inventors hope it will soon be approved for all Covid patients. Nachshon explained that oxygen makes up 21 percent of the air we breathe. “Stream02 can give up to 100%. You can get 100% oxygen through regular nasal prongs, but the flow is extremely high and Covid-19 patients can’t tolerate it.” The challenge was to make an affordable device that matches the efficiency of the expensive slow-oxygen system. “The thermodynamics are complicated, but the concept is pretty simple,” he says. A Cold Call Nachshon didn’t have any contacts at SodaStream, which was acquired by PepsiCo two years ago for $3.2 billion. He called the main number, explained his idea, and within an hour got a call from Avi Cohen, SodaStream’s head of research and development. After listening to Nachshon’s proposal, Cohen invited the physician to his nearby Jerusalem home to flesh out details that very day. “He said, ‘Bring whatever you think will help me understand what you want.’ We were all in lockdown at the time, but I sat with him on his porch and placed everything on the table,” recalls Nachshon. “Avi had already made a sketch. After our meeting, he spoke with SodaStream’s CEO, Eyal Shohat, and got the okay to work on it immediately.” Nachshon went to SodaStream’s Kfar Saba headquarters a few times “and their team came to our lab at Hadassah to better understand the needs.” The doctor feared that the invention would get stuck in governmental red tape. But the Ministry of Health quickly approved a safety and feasibility study once the prototype machines were ready in July. The study was delayed a bit only because Nachshon became very busy in Hadassah’s two Covid ICU units during the second wave of the outbreak. The StreamO2 prototype was tested not on Covid patients but on 22 postsurgical patients who could be strictly monitored. “People tolerated it very well, although some said it was too much for them,” Nachshon tells ISRAEL21c. “I’m sending my report to the Ministry of Health to get approval to use it as a device for Covid patients at Hadassah.” If all continues going well, Nachshon looks forward to getting approval for StreamO2 to be produced and distributed to other hospitals treating mild to moderate coronavirus cases. “The nasal breathing therapy machine developed by the joint team of doctors from Hadassah and SodaStream engineers can be a perfect lifesaving solution,” said Cohen. “The advantage is the ability to replicate it in bulk for patients suffering from respiratory distress in Israel and around the world.” Nachshon says StreamO2 works exactly the same as the $15,000 nasal inhalation therapy device, and “we have plans in the future to make it smarter than the present system.” To read the original article click here. For more articles from Israel21c click here.

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Study of 300 COVID-19 Patients Shows Efficacy of Convalescent Plasma Therapy

AHA Publisher — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 07:00:29 +0000

Elsevier via News-Medical Net – A preliminary analysis of an ongoing study of more than 300 COVID-19 patients treated with convalescent plasma therapy at Houston Methodist suggests the treatment is safe and effective. The results, which appear now in The American Journal of Pathology, represents one of the first peer-reviewed publications in the country assessing efficacy of convalescent plasma. From March 28, when Houston Methodist became the first academic medical center in the nation to infuse critically ill COVID-19 patients with plasma donated from recovered patients, research physicians have used the treatment on 350 patients. The study tracked severely ill COVID-19 patients admitted to Houston Methodist’s system of eight hospitals from March 28 through July 6. These latest results from Houston Methodist that now measured medical effectiveness offer valuable scientific evidence that transfusing critically ill COVID-19 patients with high antibody plasma early in their illness – within 72 hours after hospitalization proving most effective – reduced the mortality rate. The study, titled “Treatment of COVID-19 Patients with Convalescent Plasma Reveals a Signal of Significantly Decreased Mortality,” was led by principal investigator Eric Salazar, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Pathology and Genomic Medicine with the Houston Methodist Hospital and Research Institute, and corresponding author James M. Musser, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine at Houston Methodist. “Our studies to date show the treatment is safe and, in a promising number of patients, effective. While convalescent plasma therapy remains experimental and we have more research to do and data to collect, we now have more evidence than ever that this century-old plasma therapy has merit, is safe, and can help reduce the death rate from this virus.” (Dr. James M. Musser, Chair of the Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine at Houston Methodist) The research team found that those treated early in their illness with donated plasma that has the highest concentration of anti-COVID-19 antibodies are more likely to survive and recover than similar patients who were not treated with convalescent plasma. Patients with a history of severe reactions to blood transfusions, those with underlying uncompensated and untreatable end-stage disease, and patients with fluid overload or other conditions that would increase the risk of plasma transfusion were excluded. The patients were tracked for 28 days after plasma transfusion and compared to a control group of similar COVID-19 patients who did not receive convalescent plasma. An observational propensity score-matched analysis was used to balance the characteristics of participants and allow for an objective interpretation of the results at this stage. Several studies have measured safety, showing that the more than 34,000 COVID-19 patients in the United States who have received plasma transfusions for COVID-19 experienced minimal adverse effects. To read the original article click here.

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Malaria Discovery Could Expedite Antiviral Treatment for COVID-19

AHA Publisher — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 07:00:16 +0000

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University via Newswise – New research into malaria suggests targeting enzymes from the human host, rather than from the pathogen itself, could offer effective treatment for a range of infectious diseases, including COVID-19. The study, conducted by an international team and led by RMIT University’s Professor Christian Doerig, outlines a strategy that could save years of drug discovery research and millions of dollars in drug development by repurposing existing treatments designed for other diseases such as cancer. The approach shows so much promise it has received government funding for its potential application in the fight against COVID-19. The study, published in Nature Communications, demonstrated that the parasites that cause malaria are heavily dependent on enzymes in red blood cells where the parasites hide and proliferate. It also revealed that drugs developed for cancer, and which inactivate these human enzymes, known as protein kinases, are highly effective in killing the parasite and represent an alternative to drugs that target the parasite itself. Lead author, RMIT’s Dr Jack Adderley, said the analysis revealed which of the host cell enzymes were activated during infection, revealing novel points of reliance of the parasite on its human host. “This approach has the potential to considerably reduce the cost and accelerate the deployment of new and urgently needed antimalarials,” he said. “These host enzymes are in many instances the same as those activated in cancer cells, so we can now jump on the back of existing cancer drug discovery and look to repurpose a drug that is already available or close to completion of the drug development process.” As well as enabling the repurposing of drugs, the approach is likely to reduce the emergence of drug resistance, as the pathogen cannot escape by simply mutating the target of the drug, as is the case for most currently available antimalarials. Doerig, Associate Dean for the Biomedical Sciences Cluster at RMIT and senior author of the paper, said the findings were exciting, as drug resistance is one of the biggest challenges in modern healthcare, not only in the case of malaria, but with most infectious agents, including a large number of highly pathogenic bacterial species. “We are at risk of returning to the pre-antibiotic era if we don’t solve this resistance problem, which constitutes a clear and present danger for global public health. We need innovative ways to address this issue,” he said. “By targeting the host and not the pathogen itself, we remove the possibility for the pathogen to rapidly become resistant by mutating the target of the drug, as the target is made by the human host, not the pathogen.” Doerig’s team will now collaborate with the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) to investigate potential COVID-19 treatments using this approach, supported by funding from the Victorian Medical Research Acceleration Fund in partnership with the Bio Capital Impact Fund (BCIF). Co-investigator on the grant, Royal Melbourne Hospital’s Dr Julian Druce, from the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) at the Doherty Institute, was part of the team that were first to grow and share the virus that causes COVID-19, and said the research was an important contribution to efforts to defeat the pandemic. Royal Melbourne Hospital’s Professor Peter Revill, Senior Medical Scientist at the Doherty Institute and a leader on Hepatitis B research, said the approach developed by the RMIT team was truly exciting. “This has proven successful for other human pathogens including malaria and Hepatitis C virus, and there are now very real prospects to use it to discover novel drug targets for Hepatitis B and COVID-19,” he said. To read the original article click here.

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COVID Doc Says Hydroxychloroquine ‘Highly Effective’ and Fears Are Overblown – Now FDA Chief Admits It Might Help

AHA Publisher — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 07:00:10 +0000

Lori Johnson via CBN News – A Tennessee physician has a message for COVID-19 patients: Use hydroxychloroquine “if you can find a doctor with guts enough to prescribe it.” Meanwhile, the US Food and Drug Commissioner Stephen Hahn said some studies “suggest a benefit” to using the drug on COVID-19, despite the fact that the government agency issued guidance stating the use of the drug should be avoided unless it’s being studied in a clinical trial or for hospital use. In a radio interview, Hahn reiterated the fact that doctors are free to prescribe the drug “off label,” and that the FDA “does not regulate the practice of medicine.” Dr. Tom Rogers is one of those physicians who prescribe hydroxychloroquine to his COVID-19 patients. He told CBN News he personally has found the drug to be a “highly effective” way to treat the virus, provided the drug is prescribed in the early stages of the disease and is combined with the antibiotic azithromycin and a zinc supplement. “It’s a very controversial, kind of ‘Trump drug’,” he told CBN News. “There were initially a bunch of studies that said it worked, and then the powers that be came out with some other studies that said it didn’t work. But there are many, many studies and many doctors who I’ve talked to personally, on the front lines that use it all the time and it works.” He continued, “You have to use it very early,” he said. “The studies that said it didn’t work, those were hospitalized patients that were very sick.” He said possible negative consequences of taking hydroxychloroquine are over-blown. “They’re claiming it causes cardiac arrhythmia, which is rare,” he says. “I’ve never seen that. I’ve talked to rheumatologists who’ve used it for decades, they’ve never seen it.” Dr. Rogers says he prefers to prescribe the hydroxychloroquine cocktail to patients with symptoms such as fever, aches, loss of taste or smell, and believes it can prevent a patient from going to the hospital. In addition to hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin and zinc, Dr. Rogers said there are other ways patients in the early stages of COVID-19 can avoid landing in the hospital. Those include the inhaled steroid Budesonide combined with azithromycin and zinc. Budesonide is a common asthma drug he prescribes to patients who test positive for COVID-19 and have mild respiratory symptoms such as “cough, wheezing or shortness of breath that’s not acute yet.” Still, neither hydroxychloroquine nor budesonide is recommended by the FDA to treat COVID-19 because their effectiveness has not been proven in randomized, controlled studies, which is the standard requirement for FDA approval. To read the original article click here. For more articles from CBN News click here.

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Yale Medical Expert: Hydroxychloroquine Saves Lives, ‘Propaganda War’ Is Killing People

AHA Publisher — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 07:00:15 +0000

Andrea Morris via CBN News – As the number of deaths from COVID-19 rises, the debate over the effectiveness of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine has also persisted. In an op-ed published by Newsweek, Yale Epidemiology Professor Dr. Harvey Risch wrote that hydroxychloroquine is “highly effective, especially when given in combination with the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline and the nutritional supplement zinc.” Risch said the drug works against the virus when taken early before it multiplies throughout the body. He said some physicians who prescribed hydroxychloroquine to patients are now being scrutinized for their actions. But the Yale professor contends that these determined doctors were working in the best interest of their patients. “Physicians who have been using these medications in the face of widespread skepticism have been truly heroic,” he wrote. “They have done what the science shows is best for their patients, often at great personal risk. “I myself know of two doctors who have saved the lives of hundreds of patients with these medications but are now fighting state medical boards to save their licenses and reputations. The cases against them are completely without scientific merit,” Risch added. Hydroxychloroquine was praised by President Trump early on in the pandemic, despite warnings from some public health officials that the drug’s effectiveness against COVID-19 was questionable. CBN News previously reported that a new study revealed the drug was actually helping patients survive COVID-19. In fact, the study from the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan said the drug “significantly” cut the death rate of patients. “Treatment with hydroxychloroquine cut the death rate significantly in sick patients hospitalized with COVID-19 – and without heart-related side-effects,” the health organization reported. Risch pointed out real-life examples of how the drug has worked. He wrote that the number of COVID-19 related deaths in the northern Brazil state of Pará had rapidly increased a few months ago. The public hospital network bought 75,000 doses of azithromycin and 90,000 doses of hydroxychloroquine on April 6. “Even though new cases continued to occur, on May 22 the death rate started to plummet and is now about one-eighth what it was at the peak,” Risch wrote. He said a similar instance occurred- in reverse- in Switzerland in May after the Swiss national government prohibited outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. “Around June 10, COVID-19 deaths increased four-fold and remained elevated,” Risch explained. “On June 11, the Swiss government revoked the ban, and on June 23 the death rate reverted to what it had been beforehand. Thousands ‘Are Dying Unnecessarily’ Due to a ‘Propaganda War’ Risch said the drug is disregarded by some doctors and has become the victim of a “propaganda war.” “As a result, tens of thousands of patients with COVID-19 are dying unnecessarily,” Risch said. “It’s a political drug now, not a medical drug,” Risch said. “I think we are basically fighting a propaganda war against the medical facts, and that colors not just population people, how they think about it, but doctors, as well. There are many doctors that I’ve gotten hostile remarks from, saying that all the evidence is bad for it and, in fact, that is not true at all.” He also noted the problems with the concerns raised by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the risk of patients having an irregular heartbeat while taking hydroxychloroquine. Risch pointed out that what the FDA doesn’t mention is that this side effect occurred when patients used hydroxychloroquine for long periods of time, often for the treatment of arthritis and lupus. “In the future, I believe this misbegotten episode regarding hydroxychloroquine will be studied by sociologists of medicine as a classic example of how extra-scientific factors overrode clear-cut medical evidence. For the sake of high-risk patients, for the sake of our parents and grandparents, for the sake of the unemployed, for our economy and for our polity, especially those disproportionally affected, we must start treating immediately,” Risch concluded. To read the original article click here. For more articles from CBN News click here.

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Nitric Oxide Treatment Can Be Pivotal in the Fight Against COVID-19

AHA Publisher — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 07:00:52 +0000

George Washington University via News-Medical Net – Nitric oxide treatment can be pivotal in the world’s fight against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to a review from the George Washington University (GW). The article is published in the journal Nitric Oxide. Nitric oxide is an antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory molecule with key roles in pulmonary vascular function in the context of viral infections and other pulmonary diseases. In SARS-CoV-1 infection, which led to the outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003, nitric oxide inhibited viral replication by cytotoxic reactions through intermediates such as peroxynitrite. It is one of several potential COVID-19 treatments included in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s emergency expanded access program. “Nitric oxide plays key roles in maintaining normal vascular function and regulating inflammatory cascades that contribute to acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Interventions that are protective against ALI and ARDS can play a critical role for patients and health systems during the pandemic.” (Adam Friedman, MD, interim chair and professor in the Department of Dermatology at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences and co-senior author of the review) Coronaviruses are RNA viruses that primarily infect birds or livestock, but can mutate to be highly infectious and lethal in humans. There is currently no registered treatment or vaccine for COVID-19. The absence of a specific treatment and the high mortality rate of the virus dictate an urgent need for therapeutics that may control the replication and rapid spread of the virus. The team, led by first author Nagasai Adusumilli, MBA, a fourth-year medical student at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, reviewed data from between 1993 and 2020 on the pathogenesis of coronaviruses and the use of nitric oxide as a treatment for respiratory illness. The authors highlight the potential for inhaled nitric oxide contributing to better clinical outcomes and alleviating the rapidly rising strain on health care capacity due to COVID-19. As groups continue to publish more results with their respective nitric oxide platforms, the team recommends that dosing and protocol variations should be examined in evaluating the studies. “With the emergence of COVID-19 as a pandemic with the ability to overwhelm the body and our health care infrastructure, patients have a pressing need for effective agents that can slow the disease in their bodies and in their communities,” Friedman said. The authors suggest that if nitric oxide’s efficacy is illustrated for COVID-19, its use as a treatment can be pivotal in the fight against the pandemic. Friedman has been collaborating with co-senior author Joel Friedman, MD, PhD, professor of physiology and biophysics and of medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, on research related to the use of nitric oxide in a broad range of medical indications for close to two decades, and together are developing nitric oxide-based therapeutics for COVID-19. To read the original article click here.

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Turmeric Could Have Antiviral Properties

AHA Publisher — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 07:00:14 +0000

Microbiology Society via EurekAlert – Curcumin, a natural compound found in the spice turmeric, could help eliminate certain viruses. A study published in the Journal of General Virology showed that curcumin can prevent Transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) – an alpha-group coronavirus that infects pigs – from infecting cells. At higher doses, the compound was also found to kill virus particles. Infection with TGEV causes a disease called transmissible gastroenteritis in piglets, which is characterised by diarrhoea, severe dehydration and death. TGEV is highly infectious and is invariably fatal in piglets younger than two weeks, thus posing a major threat to the global swine industry. There are currently no approved treatments for alpha-coronaviruses and although there is a vaccine for TGEV, it is not effective in preventing the spread of the virus. To determine the potential antiviral properties of curcumin, the research team treated experimental cells with various concentrations of the compound, before attempting to infect them with TGEV. They found that higher concentrations of curcumin reduced the number of virus particles in the cell culture. The research suggests that curcumin affects TGEV in a number of ways: by directly killing the virus before it is able to infect the cell, by integrating with the viral envelope to ‘inactivate’ the virus, and by altering the metabolism of cells to prevent viral entry. “Curcumin has a significant inhibitory effect on TGEV adsorption step and a certain direct inactivation effect, suggesting that curcumin has great potential in the prevention of TGEV infection,” said Dr Lilan Xie, lead author of the study and researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Bioengineering. Curcumin has been shown to inhibit the replication of some types of virus, including dengue virus, hepatitis B and Zika virus. The compound has also been found to have a number of significant biological effects, including antitumor, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial activities. Curcumin was chosen for this research due to having low side effects according to Dr Xie. They said: “There are great difficulties in the prevention and control of viral diseases, especially when there are no effective vaccines. Traditional Chinese medicine and its active ingredients, are ideal screening libraries for antiviral drugs because of their advantages, such as convenient acquisition and low side effects.” The researchers now hope to continue their research in vivo, using an animal model to assess whether the inhibiting properties of curcumin would be seen in a more complex system. “Further studies will be required, to evaluate the inhibitory effect in vivo and explore the potential mechanisms of curcumin against TGEV, which will lay a foundation for the comprehensive understanding of the antiviral mechanisms and application of curcumin” said Dr Xie. To read the original article click here.

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Zinc Deficiency May Be Considered as a Risk Factor for Infectious Diseases

AHA Publisher — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 07:00:43 +0000

Sechenov University via EurekAlert – Researchers from Sechenov University in collaboration with colleagues from Germany, Greece and Russia reviewed scientific articles on the role of zinc in the prevention and treatment of viral infections and pneumonia, with projections on those caused by SARS-CoV-2. The results were published in the International Journal of Molecular Medicine. Zinc is necessary for normal metabolism and functioning of the reproductive, cardiovascular and nervous systems, but it is also important for the immune system, in particular for the proliferation and maturation of white blood cells (some of them are able to capture and digest microorganisms, and others – to produce antibodies). In addition, zinc is involved in the regulation of inflammation. Thus, normal levels of zinc support human resistance to inflammatory and infectious diseases. ‘According to the current estimates, the risk of zinc deficiency is observed in more than 1.5 billion people in the world. In Russia, deficiency of this element occurs in 20-40% of the population; in some regions it reaches 60%. Given the crucial role of zinc in regulation of immunity, one can propose that its insufficiency may be considered as a risk factor for infectious diseases,’ said the research leader, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Dietetics at Sechenov University, Professor Anatoly Skalny. The scientists reviewed the results of studies on the use of zinc-containing drugs for increasing immunity and preventing viral infections, including SARS-CoV-2 that caused COVID-19 outbreak this year. Previous studies showed that zinc and its binding substances can slow down the work of RNA polymerase (an enzyme that synthesises viral RNA molecules) of coronaviruses and suppress their spread in the body. One of the substances that stimulate the cellular zinc uptake, chloroquine, has already been tested on patients with SARS-CoV-2, but its strong side effects make it necessary to look for other compounds with a similar effect or use zinc separately. However, both options have not been sufficiently studied or tested yet. Observations of the development of other viruses, such as rhinoviruses (this family includes pathogens of acute respiratory diseases), show that an increase in the level of zinc in cells suppresses replication (reproduction) of the virus and stimulates production of interferon alpha, which has an antiviral activity. In addition, zinc deficiency is considered as one of the risk factors for the development of pneumonia: it increases the susceptibility to infectious agents and the disease duration. Several studies show the effectiveness of zinc-containing drugs in decreasing severity and duration of symptoms and reducing the prevalence of pneumonia. However, in general, data on the use of zinc as a therapy, rather than prevention, are contradictory. Another possible application of zinc is modulation of inflammation. Existing data show that zinc ions have an anti-inflammatory effect, reducing damage to lung tissue in pneumonia. Zinc also helps the body resist bacteria, and bacterial pneumonia frequently occurs in patients with secondary viral infections. ‘A recent study conducted by scientists from the USA confirmed our assumptions, demonstrating the effect of zinc intake on the risk of a severe course and the need for artificial ventilation in patients with COVID-19,’ said Alexey Tinkov, coauthor of the article, a leading researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Dietetics at Sechenov University. Therefore, according to current research, adequate zinc status can bring down the likelihood of infectious respiratory diseases, pneumonia and its complications. There are also indirect indications that zinc intake may be effective in the fight against coronavirus disease (COVID-19), but there is still insufficient data for recommendations. To read the original article click here.

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