Scientists from McGill University found three drugs could reduce death risk in severely ill COVID-19 patients.
The finding supports the testing of these drugs—tacrolimus, zotatifin and nintedanib—in controlled clinical studies.
The research is published in Science Advances and was conducted by Vinicius Fava et al.
Despite the availability of highly efficacious vaccines, SARS-CoV-2 still causes serious medical complications.
The lack of an effective drug treatment for hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19 has contributed to the more than six million deaths worldwide since the beginning of the pandemic, including more than 50,000 deaths in May 2022 alone.
In the study, the team examined patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19, looking for differences between patients who recovered and those who succumbed to the disease.
They found that certain cellular pathways were overactivated at the time of intensive care unit (ICU) admission in the deceased patients.
The researchers then identified three existing drugs targeting these pathways.
The identification by different assays of these pathways in the cells of COVID-19 survivors and deceased patients suggests that they are determinants of prognosis and make them promising targets for treatment.
The researchers used various approaches to identify drugs that could suppress the cellular pathways overactivated in patients who succumbed to COVID-19.
They finally were able to identify three promising candidate drugs (tacrolimus, zotatifin, and nintedanib) that act on the targeted pathways.
The researchers are looking forward to clinical trials that hopefully will confirm the efficacy of the three drugs to reduce the mortality of severely ill COVID-19 patients.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about why smokers have a lower risk of COVID-19, and this drug can block multiple COVID-19 variants.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies that COVID-19 is a vascular disease, and results showing Vitamin D can be a cheap COVID-19 treatment.
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