A lab study published on Friday found that an oral drug used to treat abnormal levels of fatty substances in the blood could reduce infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus by up to 70 per cent. From the University of Birmingham in the UK the team of researchers led this study and found that fenofibrate and its active form fenofibric acid can significantly reduce SARS-COV-2 infection, which causes COVID-19, in human cells in the laboratory.
According to the researchers, the decrease of infection was obtained using concentrations of the drug which are safe and achievable using the standard clinical dose of fenofibrate. Study co-author Elisa Vicenzi, of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Italy said, “Our data indicate that fenofibrate may have the potential to reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms and also virus spread.”
“Given that fenofibrate is an oral drug which is very cheap and available worldwide, together with its extensive history of clinical use and its good safety profile, our data has global implications — especially in low-middle income countries,” Vicenzi said.
It was also noted by the researchers noted that if the drug is cleared in clinical trials, may be useful in people for whom vaccines are not recommended or suitable for children, those with hyper-immune disorders and those using immune-suppressants.
The researchers further said Fenofibrate 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). It is a kind of oral drug that is currently used to treat conditions like high levels of cholesterol and lipids in the blood.
In the hospitalised patients two clinical trials of the drug are currently going on led by the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in the US and Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, said the researchers.
The host is infected by SARS-CoV-2 infects through an interaction between the spike protein on the surface of the virus and the ACE2 receptor protein on host cells. The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology, tested a panel of already licensed drugs — including fenofibrate — to identify candidates that disrupt ACE2 and spike interactions. The spike protein helps the SARS-CoV-2 virus to pass in and infect the human cells while as the ACE2 receptor found in tissues throughout the body acts as a gateway for the virus.
The efficacy of fenofibrate has been tested by the researchers in reducing infections in cells in the laboratory using the original strains of SARS-CoV-2 virus isolated in 2020.
Up to 70 per cent, fenofibrate reduced infection was found by the researchers.
They said the team noted that additional unpublished data also indicates that fenofibrate is equally effective against the newer variants of SARS-CoV-2 including the Alpha and Beta variants. Research is also ongoing into the efficacy of the drug against the Delta variant.
The study corresponding author Farhat Khanim, of the University of Birmingham said, “The development of new more infectious SARS-CoV-2 variants has resulted in a rapid expansion in infection rates and deaths in several countries around the world.”
“Whilst vaccine programmes will hopefully reduce infection rates 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,” Khanim said.
Hence there is an urgent need for further clinical studies to establish whether fenofibrate is a potential therapeutic agent to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection or not, noted the researchers.
In addition, the University of Birmingham and the San Raffaele Scientific Institute, the team also included researchers from Keele University, UK, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and the University of Liverpool in the UK.
