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ATLANTA – Researchers at the University of Georgia are very optimistic that they have found a new way to treat COVID-19 using drugs that have been around for years.
Wendy Corona from Channel 2 spoke with Dr Ralph Tripp, professor of infectious diseases at UGA on Friday, who said his two-decade work now holds great promise for treating coronavirus.
“It’s pure science, you know?” We have good, solid data for that, ”said Tripp.
Tripp has learned that probenecid, an FDA-approved drug commonly used to treat gout, can be reused to treat respiratory illnesses like the flu, RSV, and most importantly, the coronavirus.
“It works not only on circulating strains of coronavirus, but also on most variants”,
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The research spanned about two decades and was recently published in Nature’s Scientific Reports.
Tripp discovered that probenecid prevents the virus from replicating and infecting individual cells, a major finding.
“Because it works on the whole cell, not the virus, you can’t get resistance to the drug,” Tripp said.
Tested on ten people in Florida with COVID-19, the researchers found that after individuals received symptoms of probenecid, they improved in three days instead of weeks.
Funding for large clinical trials must follow, but the outlook is that a drug that has helped gout for four decades may be what is needed to stop suffering from COVID-19. More research is to come.
“Right now, the idea is to try to determine the dose as quickly as possible and then transfer that knowledge to all populations,” said Tripp.
Another advantage of probenecid is that it is a tablet compared to an IV, which is not easy in the world.
Tripp believes the drug could be used to help prevent people from getting sick, but would be used primarily for people who have tested positive for the virus.
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