Prevention of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreaks With Nitazoxanide

Overview

The new coronavirus outbreak has led to a public health emergency of international concern, putting all health organizations on high alert. As part of the hygienic measures, isolation and reinforcement cleaning strategies have been followed. It is known that special attention and efforts should be applied to protect or reduce transmission in susceptible populations, including the elderly or those with comorbidities.It has also been proposed a semaforization to classify patients with respiratory symptoms based on: Fever (38ºC or more), dry cough, headache, dyspnea, joint pain, muscle pain, sore throat, nose discharge, conjunctivitis, chest pain, diarrhea, anosmia, ageusia. Nitazoxanide has shown to be effective against several viruses, of both types RNA and DNA, including other coronavirus that produced the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Facing the lack of options against COVID-19 outbreaks for example in health workers, nitazoxanide could contribute to decrease the contagious dissemination of SARS-CoV-2, thus reducing at the same time the Hospital saturation of patients positive to this virus.

Coronaviruses (CoV) are positive-stranded single-stranded RNA viruses that infect a wide range of hosts. The new coronavirus outbreak has led to a public health emergency of international concern, putting all health organizations on high alert. The accelerated spread pushed physicians to try a variety of treatments without an established sequence due to ignorance of the disease. As part of the hygienic measures, isolation and reinforcement cleaning strategies have been followed. With current epidemiological data, it is known that special attention and efforts should be applied to reduce the transmission in susceptible populations, including the elderly or those with comorbidities. On the other hand it has also been proposed a semaforization to classify the severity of COVID-19 cases. Nitazoxanide, a drug with antibacterial and anti-protozoal effects, has also powerful antiviral effects through the phosphorylation of protein-kinase activated by double-stranded RNA, which leads to an increase in phosphorylated factor 2-alpha, an intracellular protein with antiviral effects. This drug has been effective in vitro against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome by Coronavirus (MERS), both produced by other coronavirus. Currently all the efforts in the world have been focused on the treatment of COVID-19 since there is pneumonia, the patient being in hospitalization and even in intensive care units. Probably, focusing on these late stages has distracted the attention of the initial stage, this means early treatment to prevent the evolution to critical clinical conditions. It is hypothesized that the use of nitazoxanide at an early stage of COVID-19 could decrease the contagious outbreaks of this virus in health workers, and at the same time will reduce the community dissemination and evolution of cases requiring intensive care units.