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As the COVID-19 outbreak continues and the race for a vaccine is in full swing, other treatments for the virus are often overlooked. While a vaccine will make people immune to the disease, we should be exploring other treatments that could help people who are already sick survive the illness and potentially save lives right now.
Recently, research teams at Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem, working in conjunction with New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center on COVID-19 treatments and therapeutics, released a study that suggests the FDA-approved cholesterol drug Fenofibrate, the generic form of the brand name drug Tricor, may significantly downgrade COVID-19’s severity and symptoms.
After three months of testing several FDA-approved drugs, the research team found that Fenofibrate (Tricor) caused the cells within the lungs to start burning fat, which significantly reduced COVID-19’s ability to reproduce and survive. The researchers stated that “the virus almost completely disappeared within only five days of treatment”, according to the Jerusalem Post. The lab studies were conducted in both Israel and New York and were replicated several times with different samples of human lung tissue.
Because the drug is already FDA tested and approved, this research has the potential to help us combat COVID-19 sooner rather than later. I hope that other researchers, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will pursue this lead and other leads we have to lessen the ill-effects of COVID-19.
Click here to read my press release
Click here to read the Jerusalem Post article
Click here to read the article published by Pharmaceutical-technology.com
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