Abstract: Received: 18 August 2020 Revised: 14 December 2020 Accepted: 14 December 2020 DOI: 10.1002/ptr.7004 RESEARCH ARTICLE Oral nano-curcumin formulation efficacy in management of mild to moderate hospitalized coronavirus disease-19 patients: An open label nonrandomized clinical trial Niloofar Saber-Moghaddam1 | Soofia Salari1 | Sepideh Hejazi2 | | Saeed Eslami5 | Seyed Mahdi Rezayat6 Zhila Taherzadeh4 Mahmoud Reza Jaafari7,8 | Sepideh Elyasi1 Mahnaz Amini3 | | 1 Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran 2 Rheumatic Diseases Research Center, School of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran 3 Curcumin is proposed as a potential treatment option for coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) by inhibiting the virus entrance, encapsulation and replication, and modulating various cellular signaling pathways. In this open-label nonrandomized clinical trial, efficacy of nano-curcumin oral formulation has been evaluated in hospitalized Department of Internal Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran patients with mild–moderate COVID-19. Forty-one patients who fulfilled the inclu- 4 sion criteria were allocated to nano-curcumin (n = 21) group (Sinacurcumin soft gel, Targeted Drug Delivery Research Center, School of Pharmacy, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran 5 Department of Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran contains 40 mg curcuminoids as nanomicelles, two capsules twice a day) or control (n = 20) group, for 2 weeks. Patients' symptoms and laboratory data were assessed at baseline and during follow-up period. Most of symptoms including fever and chills, tachypnea, myalgia, and cough resolved significantly faster in curcumin group. More- 6 Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 7 over, SaO2 was significantly higher in treatment group after 2, 4, 7, and 14 days of follow-up and lymphocyte count after 7 and 14 days. Duration of supplemental O2 Nanotechnology Research Center, Pharmaceutical Technology Institute, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran use and hospitalization was also meaningfully shorter in treatment group. It is also 8 Department of Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, School of Pharmacy, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran of infection during follow-up period, but it occurred in 40% of control group. Oral Correspondence Sepideh Elyasi, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran. Email: elyasis@mums.ac.ir noteworthy to mention that no patient in treatment group experienced deterioration curcumin nano-formulation can significantly improve recovery time in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Further randomized placebo controlled trials with larger sample size are recommended. KEYWORDS antiinflammatory, clinical response, COVID-19, curcumin Funding information Research Council of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences 1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N cause of COVID-19 mortality, mostly due to cytokine storm syndrome (Mehta et al., 2020; Ruan, Yang, Wang, Jiang, & Song, 2020). Actually, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-induced pneumonia became high cytokine level including IL-2, IL-7, granulocyte colony–stimulating an international concern, which led to the first pandemic of the..