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Washington, DC – January 22, 2021 – New research shows that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) reduce both antibody and inflammatory responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection in mice. The study appears this week in the Journal of Virology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.
The research is important because “NSAIDs are arguably the most commonly used anti-inflammatory drugs,” said lead researcher Craig B. Wilen, assistant professor of laboratory medicine and immunology at the Faculty of Medicine. ‘Yale University.
In addition to taking NSAIDs for chronic conditions such as arthritis, people take them “for shorter periods of time during infections, and [during] acute inflammation as experienced with COVID-19, and for side effects of vaccination, such as pain, fever and malaise, “said Dr. Wilen.” Our work suggests that meloxicam NSAIDs attenuates the immune response to l infection with SARS-CoV-2. ”
Research also suggests that the consequences of using NSAIDs during natural infection and vaccination should be evaluated in humans, Dr Wilen said. “These data probably exist, especially in clinical trials for vaccines, so they should be exploited to see if they produce antibody responses in humans.”
“Taking NSAIDs during COVID-19 could be harmful or beneficial, depending on the time of administration,” said Dr. Wilen. The powerful anti-inflammatory drug, dexamethasone (not an NSAID), is harmful to people with COVID-19 when taken early in infection, but beneficial when given in later stages of COVID-19, Dr Wilen said.
Likewise, the anti-inflammatory activity of NSAIDs could be detrimental at the onset of SARS-CoV-2 infection, as at this stage inflammation is usually helpful. This changes in later stages of COVID-19, especially if the patient experiences intense inflammation known as a cytokine storm. A cytokine storm is an immune response of inflammatory compounds that often occurs in COVID-19 patients, can lead to complications, the need for an intensive care unit, and even death.
A reduction in neutralizing antibodies caused by NSAIDs can be mild or weaken the ability of the immune system to fight disease during the early stages of infection. It could also reduce the extent and / or duration of protection against natural infections or vaccination, Dr Wilen said.
The initial motivation to study the effect of NSAIDs on COVID-19 “was a Twitter thread, suggesting that NSAIDs should not be used during COVID-19,” said Dr Wilen. “It sounded suspicious to us, so we wanted to investigate.”
Dr Wilen and his team expected that NSAIDs would have little or no effect on viral infection, which turned out to be correct. They also believed that NSAIDs would not significantly affect the antibody response to natural infection. “In fact, we didn’t even look closely at the antibody response initially because we didn’t expect it to be affected by NSAIDs. This turned out to be wrong, Dr Wilen said.
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