Israeli Discovery Could Slash Corona Threat to That of the Common Cold
Israeli Discovery Could Slash
Corona Threat to That of the Common Cold
Israeli researchers figured
out how COVID-19 attacks the lungs and discovered that a common cholesterol
drug might beat the virus, which would downgrade corona’s threat to that of the
common cold.
By Yakir Benzion, July 14, 2020
A team of researchers in
Israel and their colleagues in New York have made a breakthrough discovery of
related to how the coronavirus attacks the lungs, revealing that a common
cholesterol treatment may be able to save lives.
“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,” Nahmias concluded.
Professor Yaakov Nahmias of
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says that early research looks promising and
what they discovered may be phenomenally complex, but the treatment is simple
and apparently very effective.
Over the last three-months,
Nahmias and Dr. Benjamin tenOever of New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at
Mount Sinai hospital have focused on the ways in which the SARS-CoV-2 (the
coronavirus that’s causing our current pandemic) changes patients’ lungs in
order to reproduce itself.
What they found was stunning.
The coronavirus needs fat in order to reproduce, and because the virus prevents
the routine burning of carbohydrates, people sick with the virus have large
amounts of fat accumulating inside lung cells.
This new revelation helps
explain why patients with high blood sugar and cholesterol levels are often at
a particularly high risk to develop COVID-19.
Nahmias explains that viruses
are parasites that lack the ability to replicate on their own, so they take
control of our cells to help accomplish that task.
“By understanding how the
SARS-CoV-2 controls our metabolism, we can wrestle back control from the virus
and deprive it of the very resources it needs to survive,” Nahmias said.
Knowing that fat in cells is
part of the problem, Nahmias and tenOever went through different existing
medications to see which ones interfered with the coronavirus’ ability to
reproduce, discovering that the cholesterol-lowering drug Fenofibrate (Tricor)
showed extremely promising results.
Treating with Fenofibrate
allows lung cells to burn more fat, breaking the virus’ grip on these cells and
preventing the coronavirus from reproducing. They found that within only five
days of treatment, the virus almost completely disappeared.
“With second-wave infections
spiking in countries across the globe, these findings couldn’t come at a better
time,” said Nahmias.
Recent reports are showing
that vaccines being developed may be effective in the short term, but there are
indications that the protection might only last for a few months.
Nahmias says that blocking
the virus’ ability to function, rather than neutralizing its ability to strike
in the first place, may be the key to turning the tables on COVID-19.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-discovery-could-slash-corona-threat-to-that-of-the-common-cold/
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