A clinical trial for the drug called ibudilast is being launched to test an asthma drug's effectiveness in treating deadly conditions caused by the novel coronavirus. The drug has been approved to treat asthma in South Korea and Japan and has shown amazing results in the lung health of the mouse models during the experiments.
Reducing inflammation of COVID-19
The researchers from Yale University's New Haven Hospital hopes that the drug will help reduce inflammation and slow down the progression of the lung condition that is often seen in severely ill coronavirus patients. The drug was introduced to combat COVID-19 which has now infected more than 3 million people worldwide.
According to Dr. Geoffrey Chupp, a professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, animal models have suggested that when you use the drug for acute lung injury, it will mimic what you will see in patients. They still do not know all the mediators but they believe that if they use the drug in the patients who are critically ill, it will reduce inflammation and prevent ventilation or get them off sooner.
ARDS on COVID-19 patients
The most critically ill COVID-19 patients developed acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS. It is a type of respiratory failure which happens when there is inflammation in the lungs and fluid collects in the air sacs of the lungs, thus depriving the body of oxygen.
ARDS patients experience shortness of breath and their skin turns a blush color. This leads them needing to be put on ventilators. There is only a 20% chance of coming off a ventilator once you are placed on one. Dr. Chupp said in a statement that once a patient is in respiratory failure on a ventilator, there is no specific treatment for reducing lung injury and minimizing ARDS.
The drug ibudilast is known as an inhibitor of MIF, which is a gene that regulates the immune response and helps drive inflammation. The over-expression of the gene has been linked to numerous diseases including lupus, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis.
The team from Yale University' New Haven Hospital partnered up with California-based company MediciNova for the trial of the drug. MediciNova had been developing ibudilast as a treatment for neuroinflammation and multiple sclerosis prior to the pandemic. The researchers plan to give half of the participants the drug and the other half a placebo to test the efficacy and safety of ibudilast.
The team hopes that the drug reduces inflammation, slows down the progression of ARDS, and helps patients recover fully. COVID-19 is said to cause intense inflammation known as a cytokine storm, which happens when the body does not just fight off the virus but also attacks its own cells and tissues.
According to Dr. Chupp if the inflammation can be modulated, then they can dial back the severity of the illness. The team has now filed an application for approval from the US Food and Drug Administration and they are now waiting to hear back to begin the trial. The researchers at Yale New Haven Hospital are also performing other clinical trials on a compound called sobetirome to treat patients with ARDS.
