Health security

Hebrew U. scientist: Drug could eradicate COVID-19 from lungs in days

Researchers at Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem and New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center believe they could potentially downgrade COVID-19’s severity into nothing worse than a common cold.

New research by Hebrew University Prof. Ya’acov Nahmias and Sinai’s Dr. Benjamin tenOever revealed that the FDA-approved drug Fenofibrate (Tricor) could reduce SARS-CoV-2’s ability to reproduce or even make it disappear.

SARS-CoV-2 is the scientific name for the novel coronavirus.

“Viruses are parasites,” Nahmias explained to The Jerusalem Post. “They cannot replicate themselves. They cannot make new viruses. They have to get inside a human cell and then hijack that cell.”

As such, Nahmias and tenOever spent the last three months studying what SARS-CoC-2 is doing to human lung cells. What they found is that the novel coronavirus prevents the routine burning of carbohydrates, which results in large amounts of fat accumulating inside lung cells – a condition the virus needs to reproduce.