Researchers identify melatonin as possible treatment for COVID-19

The results of a new study from the Cleveland Clinic suggest that melatonin, a hormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and is commonly used as an over-the-counter sleeping pill, may be a viable treatment option for COVID-19.

As COVID-19 continues to spread across the world, especially with cases on the rise during what some have called the “tidal wave,” the reuse of drugs already approved by the US Food and Drug Administration United for new therapeutic purposes remains the most effective and the most expensive. effective approach to treat or prevent disease. According to results published today in PLOS Biology, a new artificial intelligence platform developed by researchers at the Lerner Research Institute to identify possible drugs for reuse of COVID-19 has revealed that melatonin is a promising candidate.

Analysis of patient data from the Cleveland Clinic’s COVID-19 registry also found that melatonin use was associated with an almost 30% reduced likelihood of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) after adjusting for age, race, smoking history, and various disease comorbidities. Notably, the reduced likelihood of testing positive for the virus fell from 30 to 52 percent for African Americans when adjusted for the same variables.

“It is very important to note that these results do not suggest that people should start taking melatonin without consulting their doctor,” said Feixiong Cheng, Ph.D., assistant staff at the Cleveland Institute of Genomic Medicine. Clinic and lead author of the study. “Large-scale observational studies and randomized controlled trials are essential to validate the clinical benefit of melatonin for patients with COVID-19, but we are excited about the associations highlighted in this study and the opportunity to develop them. explore further.

Here, researchers exploited network medicine methodologies and large-scale electronic patient health records from the Cleveland Clinic to identify clinical manifestations and common pathologies between COVID-19 and other illnesses. Specifically, they measured the proximity between the host’s genes / proteins and those well associated with 64 other diseases in several disease categories (malignant cancer and autoimmune, cardiovascular, metabolic, neurological and pulmonary diseases), where a closer proximity indicates a higher likelihood of pathological associations. between diseases.

They found, for example, that proteins associated with respiratory distress syndrome and sepsis, two leading causes of death in patients with severe COVID-19, were closely related to several SARS-CoV-2 proteins. “This signals us then,” explained Dr Cheng, “that a drug already approved for treating these respiratory conditions may have some utility in treating COVID-19 as well by acting on these common biological targets.”

Overall, they determined that autoimmune (eg, inflammatory bowel disease), pulmonary (eg, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pulmonary fibrosis) and neurological (eg genes / proteins) diseases and identified 34 drugs as candidates for reuse, led by melatonin.

“Recent studies suggest that COVID-19 is a systematic disease affecting several types of cells, tissues and organs, so knowledge of the complex interactions between the virus and other diseases is essential to understanding the complications of COVID-19 and identify reusable drugs, ”Dr Cheng said. “Our study provides a powerful and integrative network medicine strategy to predict disease manifestations associated with COVID-19 and facilitate the search for an effective treatment.”