The new use of old medicine shows god effect! Can statins really be used to treat SARS-CoV-2 infections?

August 21, 2020 // -- Now that scientists around the world have made unprecedented efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have been able to find effective ways to quickly and effectively reduce morbidity and mortality in the population; In the study, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania conducted a large observational study of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 to analyze the association between statin use and improved prognostic status, and because statins are widely used, low-cost and safe, the researchers studied their important role in improving disease symptoms and prognostics in patients with COVID-19 in randomized controlled trials.
statins are inhibitors of key cholesterol synthase (HMGCoA reductase), which has been available since the late 1980s as a special agent to effectively lower cholesterol levels and the risk of coronary heart disease, and statins are known to have anti-inflammatory and immunomodulative effects, researchers say Lipid metabolism is often involved in the infection mechanism of SARS-CoV-2, and statins, on the other hand, increase the expression of ACE2 (the main subject of SARS-CoV-2) in cells, and the results of treatment for COVID-19 patients may be worthy of further study.
photo source: David C. Fajgenbaum. Cell Metabolism 32, August 4, 2020, Doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2020.07.006 Previously, researcher Xiao-Jing Zhang reported the first large-scale observational study of statin use in PATIENT-19 patients, in which researchers conducted a retrospective cohort study of 13,981 patients admitted to the hospital, analyzing the use of statins and patients The association between treatment prognosis, in which 1,219 patients were vaccinated against statins, said that, as expected, there was a considerable difference in clinical characteristics between patients taking statins and those who did not, with a 5.2 percent risk of all-cause death for 28 days in the matching statin group and 9.4 percent in the matching non-statin group, despite the limitations of the study. Statins may be used as a drug to treat COVID-19, although later researchers will need additional observational, mechanism, proof-of-concept, and randomized controlled studies to further determine the effectiveness of their treatment.
There are several possible mechanisms that can help explain the beneficial effects of statins on COVID-19, in which the host's immune system must respond effectively to control the virus, but at the same time avoid the intense reactions produced by the body and the occurrence of cytokine storms. Cytokine storms may increase patient mortality from infection, which may hopefully help researchers develop drugs that potentially limit immune overactivation, while in vivo and in vitro trials have shown that statins suppress TLR4/MyD88/NF-kB signals and regulate the function of NLRP3 inflammatory small bodies.
While reports by researchers Zhang et al. have focused on admitted patients, the fact that statins are safe, cheap and easy to obtain can lead scientists to make early choices or considerations about the benefits of treating the disease, such as when positive diagnosis of a symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection is made, our goal is to prevent patients from moving towards more serious diseases. Progress, and importantly, given the availability of statins, the researchers are concerned that statins may be used non-standardly to prevent and treat COVID-19 before proper research is conducted, and while we recognize that the assessment of risk-benefit during an epidemic may be an important issue, it is also important to capture relevant research data before the drug is widely used.
To improve the drug reorientation process in the current outbreak, the researchers mapped out steps involving drug reorientation and launched the COVID-19 off-label and new preparation registry program to track the effects of drug reorientation, and so far more than 200 drugs have been recorded as having been used to treat COVID-19, given previous research by researcher Zhang Now that researchers have to add statins to the list of drug candidates, unlike most drugs considered for the same purpose, statins are relatively inexpensive, easy to obtain and very safe;
() References: David C. Fajgenbaum, Daniel J. Rader. Teaching Old Drugs New Tricks: Statins for COVID-19? Cell Metabolism 32, August 4, 2020, doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2020.07.006.