COVID-19: Angina drug could be an effective treatment
The clock keeps ticking for the researchers looking for ways to combat SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
It's been almost a 12 months because the virus was declared a good pandemic. For the reason that time, more than 111 million persons have tested confident for SARS-CoV-2, and almost 2.5 million people have passed away from it.
Finding ways to decrease the spread of the virus and developing a vaccine for it is vital for reducing instances. Another component in coping with the deadly pandemic is usually finding medications that may treat active infections.
A research team from Texas A good&M University in College Station believes a drug named bepridil may be able to treating clients with COVID-19. The analysis was released in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
COVID-19 treatments
In the last year, scientists have studied the function many FDA-approved drugs take up in reducing COVID-19 symptoms, and only a number of them have displayed any promise.
Remdesivir, a drug found in persons with Ebola, was the earliest drug accepted by the FDA to take care of COVID-19. The drug can slow replication of the virus within the body, reducing recovery period from 15 to 10 days.
Another drug with prior FDA approval for other purposes which can be helpful on treating COVID-19 is dexamethasone, a corticosteroid employed to reduce inflammation in your body.
This medication is approved to some patients with the virus who suffer from respiratory issues. Ever since doctors began prescribing dexamethasone to people with COVID-19, the death count in these individuals has gone down.
As the FDA granted urgent approval for the drug hydroxychloroquine to take care of COVID-19, they have since revoked that approval.
Additionally, the FDA warn there are safety issues in using this drug to treat COVID-19.
The bepridil study
Dr. Wenshe Ray Liu, a professor and the Gradipore Chair in chemistry at Texas A&M University, is among the qualified prospects of the bepridil study.
The other study lead is Dr. Chien-Te Kent Tseng, a professor and director of the SARS/MERS/COVID-19 Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Dr. Liu and the team studied 55 drugs to find a medication with prior FDA approval that could offer an alternative to remdesivir. They observed six medications which may be effective in stopping the virus from replicating, with bepridil exhibiting the most promise.
“Our team screened a lot more than 30 [FDA-approved] drugs for their ability to inhibit SARS-COV-2’s entry into people cells. The study found bepridil to own most prospect of treatment of COVID-19. As a result, we happen to be advocating for the critical consideration of using bepridil in scientific tests related to SARS-CoV-2.”
Bepridil is traditionally used to take care of angina, a condition that occurs when less blood oxygen reaches a location of the heart lean muscle than usual.
In line with the authors of the brand new study, bepridil “is a calcium channel blocker with significant antianginal activity.”
“Administration of a higher dose of bepridil might have dual capabilities to slow down the virus replication found in web host cells by both inhibiting Mpro and raising the pH of endosomes,” the authors write.
The researchers tested their theory by injecting the virus in both African green monkey cells and people cells. Additionally, they examined the bepridil at three diverse concentrations. They discovered that the higher concentration of the medication “works well in inhibiting SARS-CoV-2.”
“Collectively, our results indicate that bepridil is an efficient medicine in stopping SARS-CoV-2 from entry and replication in mammalian cell hosts,” the authors write. “Subsequently, we urge the account of scientific tests of bepridil in the treating COVID-19.”
It is important to note that bepridil isn't currently available as a good prescription drug in america. The authors remember that the manufacturers of the drug voluntarily withdrew it from being sold when some concerns of it creating heart issues came up.
However, it really is still prescribed far away, such as Japan, France, and China.
Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com
