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Generic $ 1.50-a-day drug appears to have strong COVID-fighting ability, Israeli researchers say after inflammation levels ‘dropped like a rock’ in coronavirus patients in small trial clinical.
A research team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem proposed at the start of the pandemic that fenofibrate, a generic fat-reducing drug and one of the most prescribed drugs in America, could help patients with COVID-19 .
He saw the drug effectively fight the coronavirus in vitro a year ago and has conducted data studies since. Now, the team has administered the drug to 15 severe COVID-19 patients at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. All were receiving oxygen, but all were discharged during the 10-day trial.
“We saw that it worked,” Professor Yaakov Nahmias of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told The Times of Israel. “It’s very promising, and it’s exciting because it’s a very inexpensive generic drug with minimal side effects.”
He pointed out that more research involving a placebo group is ongoing and is needed to draw definitive conclusions, but said there is clear comparison data for the 15 patients, in the form of medical records from 144 others. who were also sick with the coronavirus.
Based on these records, he expected only 28.5% of patients to withdraw from oxygen in less than seven days. He found that 93% – all but one of the patients – in his trial had lost oxygen during this time.
Illustration of data from the Hebrew University study on fenofibrate, showing when oxygen was safely removed from patients (courtesy Hebrew University)
Comparison data suggests that 80 to 90% of patients would experience a cytokine storm, the overriding immune response that often causes COVID to deteriorate. None of the 15 patients in the new study experienced an observable cytokine storm.
“We monitored the patients very closely, taking samples every other day, and we followed the inflammation, which fell like a rock, and the immune responses,” Nahmias said. “Both have given rise to optimism.”
Medical staff in the coronavirus ward at Herzog Medical Center in Jerusalem, July 29, 2021 (Yonatan Sindel / Flash90)
In June 2020, Nahmias, director of the Grass Center for Bioengineering at Hebrew University, announced that experiments in his lab indicated that fenofibrate could help coronavirus patients. In December, he reported that people who take fenofibrate for its lipid-lowering qualities have “amazing” results compared to other people with coronavirus.
The drug, which is sold under several brand names, is the 73rd most prescribed drug in the United States. It is designed to reduce fats called triglycerides, the most common type of fat.
When originally suggesting the drug, Nahmias’ team hypothesized that the new coronavirus is so vicious because it causes lipids to be deposited in the lungs, and that fenofibrate could break down lipids and help. the patients.
Teacher. Yaakov Nahmias of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (courtesy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Abbott Laboratories, one of several manufacturers of fenofibrate, gave a grant to support the research, but Nahmias stressed that the study, which was published online but not yet peer-reviewed, was independent. The trial was conducted before the Delta variant arrived in Israel, but Nahmias said he was confident the drug would work on different variants.
Professor Shlomo Maayan, head of the infectious disease unit at Barzilai, coordinated the trial.
“It’s important,” he told The Times of Israel.
“It should be noted that all of the patients have returned home and that the inflammatory markers have been significantly reduced. Although we did not perform a double-blind controlled trial, we did do a historical control, that is, a comparison with a similar group of patients. And these patients were released later, their recovery rate was slower, and inflammatory markers did not drop as quickly as those in our study group.
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