Decades-Old Drug May Help Protect Against Severe COVID-19 Symptoms
Decades-Old Drug May Help Protect Against Severe COVID-19 Symptoms: Study
An old pharmaceutical drug may offer new hope in protecting against serious COVID-19 symptoms.
A new study suggests that the drug disulfiram, which was approved to treat alcoholism 70 years ago, protected rodents infected with COVID-19 from lung injury. The findings come from a preclinical study coordinated by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
The Epoch Times reports that researchers shared why the findings are important:
“Certain white blood cells called neutrophils form inside some people suffering from COVID-19, damaging the lungs. No drugs have yet been found to prevent this from happening,” researchers said.
“Disulfiram,” they added, “dramatically reduced the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NET), which cause fluid to accumulate in the lungs and sometimes lead to blood clots.”
Researchers found that mice that were infected with the COVID virus and had disulfiram administered were 55% more likely to survive than mice with COVID not receiving the drug.
The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center and the Pershing Square Foundation were the primary funders of the research and report.
In a paper published by The Journal of Clinical Investigation on Feb. 8, researchers said the new report confirms the results of a previous study that suggested: “disulfiram could be useful in the management of pathologies involving NETs, including lung injuries, sepsis, thrombosis, and cancer.”
Dr. Robert Schwartz, an associate professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, said in a statement:
“As we learn more about the underlying biology of these lung injuries, we may be able to specifically target the processes that are damaging the lung tissue,”
He added, “Currently, there aren’t any good treatment options for COVID-related lung injury, so disulfiram appears to be worth investigating further in this regard, particularly in severe COVID-19 patients.”
According to a previous report in the Epoch Times, other drugs that are approved for different uses but have shown success against COVID-19, include ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and fluvoxamine. However, the CDC and FDA do not recommend the above medications to treat COVID-19.
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