Antivirals Effective Against Coronavirus?

[dave11]

Relating to bismuth:

Abstract: "SARS-CoV-2 is causing a pandemic of COVID-19, with high infectivity and significant mortality1. Currently, therapeutic options for COVID-19 are limited. Historically, metal compounds have found use as antimicrobial agents, but their antiviral activities have rarely been explored. Here, we test a set of metallodrugs and related compounds, and identify ranitidine bismuth citrate, a commonly used drug for the treatment of Helicobacter pylori infection, as a potent anti-SARS-CoV-2 agent, both in vitro and in vivo. Ranitidine bismuth citrate exhibited low cytotoxicity and protected SARS-CoV-2-infected cells with a high selectivity index of 975. Importantly, ranitidine bismuth citrate suppressed SARS-CoV-2 replication, leading to decreased viral loads in both upper and lower respiratory tracts, and relieved virus-associated pneumonia in a golden Syrian hamster model. In vitro studies showed that ranitidine bismuth citrate and its related compounds exhibited inhibition towards both the ATPase (IC50 = 0.69 µM) and DNA-unwinding (IC50 = 0.70 µM) activities of the SARS-CoV-2 helicase via an irreversible displacement of zinc(II) ions from the enzyme by bismuth(III) ions. Our findings highlight viral helicase as a druggable target and the clinical potential of bismuth(III) drugs or other metallodrugs for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection. "

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33028965/

Other useful metal-based supplements are zinc, selenium, and magnesium.

 

[anne_likes_red]

OK Kids, just in case you're going to try this at home do so with CAUTION!
I got some mild irritation of the bronchial and lung tissue after using it a few times. My response could be due to using ionic zinc concurrently. I've used zinc acetate lozenges every time I've left the house since April 2020. Ionic zinc 'potentiates' the effect of povidone iodine so it may be that both together is a bit of an overkill approach.
The irritation has resolved after 2 days.
I think I'll stick with povidone iodine nasal spray or drops and throat gargle.

Thanks for your thoughts and the reminder about Bismuth. Interesting!
I have bismuth citrate to hand already in a Thorne product (Peptiguard). The label suggests it's OK to use it for eight weeks straight at the dose of 960mg per day. I got mine for possible HP infection too...but my test was negative so I didn't use it in the end.

My husband put this hookah thingy together for me. It does indeed deliver a vapour. I'm used to using povidone iodine nasal spray and gargling it too but I can feel this method gets it deeper into the respiratory system. I guess a cigarette substitute Vape would work fine too but users might need to be careful with the dosing. View attachment 46607

 

[dave11]

A peer-reviewed clinical trial with quercetin:

"Possible Therapeutic Effects of Adjuvant Quercetin Supplementation Against Early-Stage COVID-19 Infection: A Prospective, Randomized, Controlled, and Open-Label Study"

"The study has compared two groups of treatment constituted by 76 outpatients each: a Standard Care (SC) group and a second group (QP) where, besides the standard care, the subjects were treated for 30 days with two tablets/day containing as active ingredient 500 mg of a bioavailable form of quercetin As shown in Table 1, the two groups resulted to be overlapping for numbers of patients, sex, and age stratification with no statistically significant differences. According to Table 2, outpatients needing hospitalization were 22 (28.9%), with an average length of 6.77 ± 3.08 days in the SC group, and 7 (9.2%) with an average length of 1.57 ± 0.53 in the QP group. Both data resulted to be highly significant. Patients needing not invasive oxygen therapy were 15 (19.7%) in the SC group and 1 (1.3%) in the QP group, with highly significant difference between the groups. Patients progressive to very severe conditions to proceed to intensive care unit (ICU) were 8 (10.5%) in the SC group. Three of them died. No patients of the QP group proceeded to ICU and none of that group died. Both ICU and death results show significant difference between the two groups, when calculated with the likelihood ratio, and close to be significant when calculated with Pearson (Table 2)." ........
" According to the results obtained in our 30-day, prospective, randomized, controlled, open-label and pilot clinical study in which 152 COVID-19 symptomatic outpatients were enrolled, the use as adjuvant therapy of a daily dose of 1000 mg/day of formulated quercetin (2 daily doses of 500 mg each), corresponding to 400 mg of quercetin delivered by sunflower lecithin (a food-grade delivery system used to improve the well-known poor oral bioavailability of quercetin), statistically improved all the clinical outcomes considered (need and length of hospitalization, need of non-invasive oxygen therapy, progression to intensive care units and death) being at the same time well tolerated by all the subjects."
https://www.dovepress.com/possible-...ation-aga-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-IJGM

 

[Hipsman]

Hmm, povidone iodine might not be as effective as we thought for covid

A Pilot Study of 0.4% Povidone-Iodine Nasal Spray to Eradicate SARS-CoV-2 in the Nasopharynx

Conclusion: The 0.4% PVP-I nasal spray demonstrated minimal virucidal efficacy at 3 minutes post-exposure. At 4 hours post-exposure, the viral titer was considerably unchanged from baseline in 10 cases. The 0.4% PVP-I nasal spray showed poor virucidal activity and is unlikely to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in prophylaxis use>

https://www.dovepress.com/a-pilot-s...-sars-cov--peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-IDR