COVID Double Whammy

The difference between a mild bout of COVID-19 and a severe, potentially fatal form of the disease is largely down to the patient’s own immune response to the virus – excessive inflammation being linked with hospitalisations and death. This has prompted researchers to find drugs that can quell such rampant responses. And, in a screen of more than 2,500 drugs approved for use in humans, researchers found that among the most promising was one called niclosamide. When the drug was applied to SARS-CoV-2-infected human macrophages (shown), it dramatically inhibited the cells’ inflammasomes (green) – complexes that produce and pump out inflammatory factors. As a bonus, the drug also dialled down replication of the virus. Niclosamide is currently used as an oral treatment for tapeworm and would need reformulating to work in the lungs. The fact that it potentially offers a double punch against COVID, though, suggests such reformulation would certainly be worthwhile.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image by Leticia Almeida and Keyla Sá, Universidade de São Paulo
• Departamento de Biologia Celular e Molecular e Bioagentes Patogênicos, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Science Advances, September 2022