Does zinc supplementation enhance the clinical efficacy of chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine to win today's battle against COVID-19?
et al., Medical Hypotheses, doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2020.109815, Apr 2020 (preprint)
Zinc for COVID-19
2nd treatment shown to reduce risk in
July 2020, now with p = 0.00000028 from 47 studies, recognized in 23 countries.
No treatment is 100% effective. Protocols
combine treatments.
6,300+ studies for
210+ treatments. c19early.org
|
Hypothesis that HCQ/CQ + zinc will be more effective than HCQ/CQ alone for COVID-19.
Study covers zinc and HCQ.
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Derwand et al., 6 Apr 2020, peer-reviewed, 2 authors.
Contact: martin.scholz@leukocare.com.
Does zinc supplementation enhance the clinical efficacy of chloroquine/ hydroxychloroquine to win today's battle against COVID-19?
Currently, drug repurposing is an alternative to novel drug development for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. The antimalarial drug chloroquine (CQ) and its metabolite hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) are currently being tested in several clinical studies as potential candidates to limit SARS-CoV-2-mediated morbidity and mortality. CQ and HCQ (CQ/HCQ) inhibit pH-dependent steps of SARS-CoV-2 replication by increasing pH in intracellular vesicles and interfere with virus particle delivery into host cells. Besides direct antiviral effects, CQ/HCQ specifically target extracellular zinc to intracellular lysosomes where it interferes with RNA-dependent RNA polymerase activity and coronavirus replication. As zinc deficiency frequently occurs in elderly patients and in those with cardiovascular disease, chronic pulmonary disease, or diabetes, we hypothesize that CQ/HCQ plus zinc supplementation may be more effective in reducing COVID-19 morbidity and mortality than CQ or HCQ in monotherapy. Therefore, CQ/HCQ in combination with zinc should be considered as additional study arm for COVID-19 clinical trials.
Conflict of interest The author Roland Derwand is/was at the time of writing an employee of Alexion Pharma Germany GmbH. The author Martin Scholz is/was at the time of writing External Senior Advisor for the company LEUKOCARE in Munich, Germany. The authors confirm that this article content has no conflict of interest.
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