Is Viagra the answer against COVID-19? Researchers think gas used to make the drug can help treat patients
As the hunt to develop a suitable treatment against the new coronavirus intensifies, US doctors are evaluating another line of treatment: a gas that helped create viagra.
Doctors from the Massachusetts General Hospital are now testing if the gas called nitric oxide (NO) can help patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 and those with severe disease.
The applications of the gas go beyond treating erectile dysfunction. It is shown to help patients gasping for oxygen breathe. It has saved the lives of many babies born prematurely.
The US Food and Drug Administration approved nitric oxide therapy in 1999. Doctors have since used it to rescue oxygen-deprived patients with failed lungs.
"About a half-million Americans have breathed in NO. Mainly adults with cardiac surgery and various things and, of course, 30,000 babies a year," Warren Zapol, the emeritus anesthetist-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School, told Gizmodo.
The compound widens blood vessel walls, allowing blood and oxygen flow to all parts of the body. It is this feature that prompted doctors to investigate it against erectile dysfunction, helping create viagra.
All eyes on COVID-19
Chinese researchers suggested the gas was doing more than just helping patients breathe: it was also killing the SARS virus, a close relative of the new coronavirus.
Supporting this line of evidence were other lab experiments that came up with similar findings. Dr Lorenzo Berra, a critical-care specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital who is leading the trials, told Los Angeles Times he wanted to try the gas on COVID-19 patients after it showed promise during the SARS epidemic.
Berra and his colleagues are now spearheading two human trials to investigate its effects on COVID-19 patients. In the first, they will try gas therapy on intensive care patients struggling to breathe. The second trial will evaluate if it can treat patients with a mild or moderate infection.
The team is also hoping to get another study up and running. It will examine if it can protect frontline healthcare workers. "I hate seeing doctors and nurses becoming COVID-19 positive. I hate it," Zapol said. "So we'll hopefully see if we can prevent health care workers from going positive," Zapol told Gizmodo.
These studies will help scientists understand if the line of treatment benefits COVID-19 patients. "It is something that bears looking closely at, and if we look at the panoply of other studies being done, frankly, I put more money on the mechanisms we are proposing than some of the others," Stuart Harris, an attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, told CNBC.
How it can help COVID-19 patients?
A complication of severe COVID-19 is respiratory distress. Patients with this condition lose their ability to breathe, thanks to the excessive fluid clogging the lungs, thereby cutting off the oxygen supply.
The hope is that nitric oxide can reverse these effects. "This is primarily, first, a lung injury. We all know that. But if you don’t stop it, it will get to your heart, your liver, the rest of your organs, and kill you,” Zapol told Gizmodo.