Anti-Inflammatories Could Suppress COVID According to Study

ANTI-INFLAMMATORIES Could Suppress COVID According to a Study

New research in mice published in the scientific journal ‘Journal of Virology’ has shown that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as Aspirin and Ibuprofen, reduce both the antibody and inflammatory responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

“NSAIDs are possibly the most widely used anti-inflammatory drugs,” explains lead researcher Craig B. Wilen, associate professor of Laboratory Medicine and Immunology at Yale University School of Medicine.

In addition to taking NSAIDs for chronic conditions like arthritis, people take them “for shorter periods of time during infections, and in acute inflammation like that experienced with COVID-19, and for vaccination side effects, such as pain, fever and malaise,” stated Wilen.

Research also suggests that the consequences of NSAID use during natural infection and vaccination should be evaluated in humans: “It is likely that these data exist, especially in clinical trials of vaccines, so they should be used to see if they produce antibody responses in people,” says the scientist.

Taking NSAIDs during covid-19 could be harmful or beneficial, depending on the timing of administration, according to this research. The potent anti-inflammatory dexamethasone (which is not an NSAID) is harmful to COVID-19 sufferers when taken early in the infection, but beneficial when administered during the later stages of COVID-19.

Similarly, the anti-inflammatory activity of NSAIDs could be detrimental early in SARS-CoV-2 infection, because inflammation is often helpful in this phase. That changes in the later stages of COVID-19, especially if the patient suffers from intense inflammation known as a cytokine storm.

A cytokine storm is an immune response of inflammatory compounds that often occurs in patients with Covid-19 and can lead to complications, the need to go to the intensive care unit, and even death.

The reduction in neutralising antibodies caused by NSAIDs could be benign, or it could reduce the immune system’s ability to fight disease during the early stages of infection. It could also reduce the magnitude and/or duration of protection from natural infection or vaccination, says Wilen.

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