New Delhi: In case you are expecting the third wave of COVID-19 to appear by the end of August, and vaccination campaigns are still slow in many states, here is a new study! A common drug used to lower cholesterol, statins, may prove to be a life-saving drug for patients with COVID-19, according to a new study.
Serach indicated that a hospitalized coronavirus patient who took statins was much less likely to die from the disease.
What are the findings about the drug?
In a new study from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, researchers found that patients taking statin drugs had a 41 percent lower risk of hospital death from COVID-19. Statins are a drug used to control high cholesterol levels because it blocks the liver enzymes that produce these waxy lipids.
“When faced with this virus at the start of the pandemic, there was a lot of speculation about certain drugs that affect the body’s ACE2 receptor, including statins, and whether they might affect COVID-19 risk. ,” says Lori Daniels, MD, lead study author and director of the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit at UC San Diego Health.
This is when the researcher recognized that statins could inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection through their known anti-inflammatory effects and binding abilities, which could potentially halt the progression of the virus. The findings were applied to a cohort of 10,541 COVID patients during a nine-month period between January and September 2020.
The findings showed that patients taking statins for medical reasons with a history of heart disease or high blood pressure showed the greatest benefit of this unlikely COVID defense. According to the current study, the use of statins or other anti-hypertensive drugs contributed to a 32 percent reduction in the risk of death from COVID in patients with heart disease or high blood pressure.
Why did statins help covid patients so much?
It is believed that the ACE2 receptor, which is seen as a main target of statin drugs, plays a key role in this benefit. Last year it was analyzed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus targets this particular receptor when it attacks human lung cells. The new study shows that statins and other high blood pressure drugs help stabilize underlying diseases in patients who take them. This observation makes it more likely that people will recover from COVID-19 during the current crisis.
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