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

Summary

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.

Timeline

Start

2020-05-21

Primary completion

2020-12-31

Completion

2020-12-31

Publications

• Background Dhama K, Sharun K, Tiwari R, Dadar M, Malik YS, Singh KP, Chaicumpa W. COVID-19, an emerging coronavirus infection: advances and prospects in designing and developing vaccines, immunotherapeutics, and therapeutics. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2020 Jun 2;16(6):1232-1238. doi: 10.1080/21645515.2020.1735227. Epub 2020 Mar 18.
• Background Mifsud EJ, Tilmanis D, Oh DY, Ming-Kay Tai C, Rossignol JF, Hurt AC. Prophylaxis of ferrets with nitazoxanide and oseltamivir combinations is more effective at reducing the impact of influenza a virus infection compared to oseltamivir monotherapy. Antiviral Res. 2020 Apr;176:104751. doi: 10.1016/j.antiviral.2020.104751. Epub 2020 Feb 20.
• Background Rossignol JF. Nitazoxanide, a new drug candidate for the treatment of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. J Infect Public Health. 2016 May-Jun;9(3):227-30. doi: 10.1016/j.jiph.2016.04.001. Epub 2016 Apr 16.
• Background Rossignol JF. Nitazoxanide: a first-in-class broad-spectrum antiviral agent. Antiviral Res. 2014 Oct;110:94-103. doi: 10.1016/j.antiviral.2014.07.014. Epub 2014 Aug 7.

Drugs

Indications