US/World News

Israel-US team find drug that can stop Covid-19 in its tracks

(Israel21c) – Could a well-known cholesterol-lowering drug help treat Covid-19? A research team led by Hebrew University of Jerusalem Prof. Yaakov Nahmias says that early research looks promising. Over the last three-months, Nahmias and Dr. Benjamin tenOever at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center have focused on the ways in which COVID-19 changes patients’ lungs in order to reproduce itself. Their major finding is that this virus prevents the routine burning of carbohydrates. As a result, large amounts of fat accumulate inside lung cells, and this enables the virus to reproduce. 

This new understanding may help explain why patients with high blood sugar and cholesterol levels are often at a particularly high risk to develop COVID-19. With this information in hand, Nahmias and tenOever began to screen FDA-approved medications that interfere with the virus’ ability to reproduce. In lab studies, the cholesterol-lowering drug Fenofibrate (Tricor) showed extremely promising results. By allowing lung cells to burn more fat, fenofibrate broke the virus’ grip on these cells. Within five days of treatment, the virus almost completely disappeared, the researchers report in this week’s Cell Press’ Sneak Peak.

“If our findings are borne out by clinical studies, this course of treatment could potentially downgrade Covid-19’s severity into nothing worse than a common cold,” said Nahmias.

Main Photo: [NIAID]

SHARE
RELATED POSTS
PA using U.S. funds to pay released terrorists, congressmen say
BREAKING NEWS: New Haven JCC receives phone-in bomb threat a second time
Sharon Osbourne, Gene Simmons among 100+ artist to slam boycott Eurovision call

Leave Your Reply