Sestili Piero, Stocchi Vilberto
Department of Biomolecular Sciences (DISB), Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy.
Front Pharmacol. 2020 Jun 5;11:854. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2020.00854. eCollection 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic is posing an unprecedented sanitary threat. In the absence of specific vaccines and anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs, medicines that may assist in tackling the emergency and limiting the high number of fatalities are urgently needed. The repositioning of available drugs to treat COVID-19 is the only and rapid option in the face of the lack of direct antiviral agents and vaccines available. In this light it is important to focus on available drugs, which, based on their pharmacodynamics, could plausibly attenuate viral growth as well as COVID-19's worst complications. This is the case of chloroquine and tocilizumab which seem to limit virus replication and the severity of interstitial pneumonia, respectively. However, these treatments, particularly those aimed at containing inflammation, are still reserved for the most severe cases. This commentary elaborates on the pharmacological rationale of repositioning the mast cell stabilizer chromones as an adjunctive treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infection, and proposes their practical clinical testing as an early, safe, and cost-effective anti-inflammatory intervention in COVID-19 to limit the eventual secondary progression toward life-threatening respiratory complications.
新冠疫情正构成前所未有的卫生威胁。在缺乏特定疫苗和抗SARS-CoV-2药物的情况下，迫切需要有助于应对这一紧急情况并减少大量死亡的药物。鉴于缺乏直接的抗病毒药物和疫苗，重新利用现有药物治疗新冠疫情是唯一快速可行的选择。因此，关注现有药物很重要，基于其药效学，这些药物可能合理地减弱病毒生长以及新冠疫情最严重的并发症。氯喹和托珠单抗就是这种情况，它们似乎分别限制病毒复制和间质性肺炎的严重程度。然而，这些治疗方法，尤其是那些旨在控制炎症的方法，仍仅用于最严重的病例。本评论阐述了将肥大细胞稳定剂色酮重新用作SARS-CoV-2感染辅助治疗的药理学原理，并建议将其实际临床测试作为一种早期、安全且具有成本效益的抗炎干预措施用于新冠疫情，以限制最终向危及生命的呼吸并发症的继发进展。
