Doctors Impressed by Drugs That Rejuvenate Immune System

The pharmaceutical fight against COVID-19 may be affected by immunity-boosting drugs.

According to MIT Technology Review, a number of drugs are being studied to see if they can help correct the damage done to the immune system by the coronaviruses.

One of the most promising avenues of research comes from a class of pharmaceuticals known as statins, which are most commonly used to combat high cholesterol but have in recent years been studied for their off-label immunity- boosting properties.

Janet Lord told MIT Tech that she and many in her cohort believe that this class of drugs is better at improving immune systems than lowering cholesterol.

Lord and her colleagues ran a small statin trial for older people who were hospitalized with pneumonia. The patients who took a statin simvastatin were less likely to die than the placebo patients.

Lord and her team aren't the only ones looking into whether statin therapy can help with CO.

Xiao-Jing Zhang, a researcher at the Wuhan University, compared the outcomes of patients who were on cholesterol-lowering drugs when they were hospitalized with COVID to those who weren't. They found that people who were taking sennas were less likely to die.

New drugs that might help older people cope with COVID infections are being looked into by upstart labs.

According to MIT Tech, the most promising of these pharma startups is TornadoTherapeutics, which is working on treatments that target the mTOR enzyme that regulates metabolism. The first study looking into a drug to help older people have less severe flu vaccine responses was promising, but the follow-up trial yielded poor results.

According to the outlet's reporting, Tornado Therapeutics has been giving drugs similar to rapamycin, an immunosuppressive drug most often given to people to help them recover from a transplant. The patients taking the rapamycin clone developed no symptoms, while half of those taking the placebo died and 25 percent of placebo subjects developed severe COVID.

There is a lot of study needed to figure out if anti-aging drugs actually help our immune systems, but anything that sticks when thrown at the wall is a good thing.

Anti-aging drugs are being tested as a way to treat covid.

Inmates are treated with Ivermectin without their knowledge.