Coronavirus Treatment: This Common Drug Found In Many Hospitals Can Be Repurposed To Reduce COVID-19 Deaths

A team of medical experts has proposed repurposing a commonly found drug in many hospitals worldwide to reduce COVID-19 associated mortality.

The study published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery could help doctors reduce the significant strain on lifesaving devices including ventilators which are facing a serious shortage during this pandemic.

Per recent reports, 80% of COVID-19 patients will go through only mild to moderate symptoms and won't even need to be hospitalized. Whereas, some others who might really need hospitalization could be experiencing severe symptoms and their condition could even be life-threatening.

Ventilators are life-saving machines that help these patients breathe. Although there is a wide range of these devices, their sole purpose is to oxygenate a patient’s blood when they weren’t able to breathe naturally. And, per recent estimates, the U.S. and several other nations are already running short of ventilators to accommodate the increasing number of COVID-19 patients.

According to the new research, tissue plasminogen activator a.k.a. tPA , a common drug found in several hospitals, can be repurposed to alleviate the pressure on intensive care units and ventilator devices. tPA is a kind of protein used by doctors to break up blood clots in people suffering from a heart attack or a stroke.

Per the initial data from COVID-19 patients in China and Italy, blood clotting, especially in the lungs is one of the main causes of death among the critically ill.

“If this were to work, which I hope it will, it could potentially be scaled up very quickly, because every hospital already has it in their pharmacy. We don’t have to make a new drug, and we don’t have to do the same kind of testing that you would have to do with a new agent. This is a drug that we already use. We’re just trying to repurpose it,” Medical News Today quoted Michael Yaffe, a David H. Koch Professor of Science at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and senior author of the research.

The researchers highlight the fact that blood clotting is one of the main reasons behind respiratory failure, which ceases the oxygenation of an individual’s blood. Given its effects in treating blood clots of patients suffering from heart ailments, the team looked at whether this tPA can be repurposed to reduce this blood clotting.

With a significant proportion of COVID-19 patients having blood clots, the research team hopes that this drug could be beneficial in preventing COVID-19 mortalities.