Research Shows Drug Reduces COVID Infection by Up to 70% – Already FDA Approved for Cholesterol

Research shows that a drug approved for use by most countries in the world, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), is SARS-CoV-2. could reduce infection by up to 70 percent.

An approved drug normally used to treat abnormal levels of fatty substances in the blood may reduce infection caused by SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) by up to 70 percent, a lab study by a researcher reveals. international collaboration of researchers.

The research team, led by the University of Birmingham and Keele University in the UK and the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Italy, have shown that fenofibrate and its active form (fenofibric acid) reduce SARS-COV-2 infection in human cells in the laboratory. Importantly, reduction of infection was achieved using concentrations of the drug that are safe and achievable with the standard clinical dose of fenofibrate. Fenofibrate, which is approved for use by most countries in the world, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), is an oral medication currently used to treat conditions such as high levels of cholesterol and lipids (fatty substances) in the blood.

The team is now calling for clinical trials to test the drug in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, to be conducted in addition to two clinical trials currently underway in such patients in research led by the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in the US and Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, infects the host through an interaction between the Spike protein on the surface of the virus and the ACE2 receptor protein on host cells. In this study, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the team tested a panel of already licensed drugs — including fenofibrate — to identify candidates that disrupt ACE2 and Spike interactions. After identifying fenofibrate as a candidate, they then tested the drug’s efficacy in reducing infection in cells in the lab using the original strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus isolated in 2020. They found that fenofibrate reduced the infection by up to 70%. Additional unpublished data also indicate that fenofibrate is equally effective against the newer variants of SARS-CoV-2, including the alpha and beta variants, and its efficacy in the delta variant is under investigation.

Corresponding author Dr. Farhat Khanim, from the University of Birmingham in the UK, explained: “The development of new, more contagious SARS-CoV-2 variants has led to a rapid increase in infections and deaths in several countries around the world, especially the UK, US and Europe While vaccine programs will hopefully reduce the infection rate and virus spread in the longer term, there is still an urgent need to expand our arsenal of drugs to treat SARS-CoV-2 positive patients .”

Co-corresponding author Dr. Alan Richardson, from Keele University in the UK, added: “While vaccination programs are advancing rapidly in some countries, vaccine uptake rates are variable and for most low-middle-income countries it is unlikely that a significant proportion of the population will be vaccinated until 2022. In addition, although vaccination has been shown to reduce infection rates and disease severity, we are not yet certain of the strength and duration of the response. There is still an urgent need for therapies to treat COVID-19 patients who develop symptoms or require hospitalization.”

Co-author Dr. Elisa Vicenzi, of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy, said: “Our data indicate that fenofibrate has the potential to reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms and also the spread of the virus. Given that fenofibrate is an oral drug that is very inexpensive and available worldwide, along with its extensive history of clinical use and good safety profile, our data has global implications – especially in low-middle-income countries and those for whom vaccines are available. are not recommended or appropriate, such as children, people with hyperimmune diseases, and people taking immune suppressants.”

First author Dr. Scott Davies, also of the University of Birmingham, concluded: “We now urgently need further clinical studies to establish whether fenofibrate is a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

Reference: “The hyperlipidemic drug fenofibrate significantly reduces infection by SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture models” by Scott P. Davies, Courtney J. Mycroft-West, Isabel Pagani, Harriet J. Hill, Yen-Hsi Chen, Richard Karlsson, Ieva Bagdonaite, Scott E. Guimond, Zania Stamataki, Marcelo Andrade De Lima, Jeremy E. Turnbull, Zhang Yang, Elisa Vicenzi, Mark A. Skidmore, Farhat L. Khanim6 and Alan Richardson, Aug 6, 2021, Frontiers in Pharmacology.
DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2021.660490

The research, published on August 6, 2021 in Frontiers in Pharmacology, was also conducted in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the University of Liverpool in the UK.