Potential therapeutic effects of dipyridamole in the severely ill patients with COVID-19

oleh: Xiaoyan Liu, Zhe Li, Shuai Liu, Jing Sun, Zhanghua Chen, Min Jiang, Qingling Zhang, Yinghua Wei, Xin Wang, Yi-You Huang, Yinyi Shi, Yanhui Xu, Huifang Xian, Fan Bai, Changxing Ou, Bei Xiong, Andrew M. Lew, Jun Cui, Rongli Fang, Hui Huang, Jincun Zhao, Xuechuan Hong, Yuxia Zhang, Fuling Zhou, Hai-Bin Luo

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: Elsevier 2020-07-01

Deskripsi

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection can cause acute respiratory distress syndrome, hypercoagulability, hypertension, and multiorgan dysfunction. Effective antivirals with safe clinical profile are urgently needed to improve the overall prognosis. In an analysis of a randomly collected cohort of 124 patients with COVID-19, we found that hypercoagulability as indicated by elevated concentrations of D-dimers was associated with disease severity. By virtual screening of a U.S. FDA approved drug library, we identified an anticoagulation agent dipyridamole (DIP) in silico, which suppressed SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro. In a proof-of-concept trial involving 31 patients with COVID-19, DIP supplementation was associated with significantly decreased concentrations of D-dimers (P < 0.05), increased lymphocyte and platelet recovery in the circulation, and markedly improved clinical outcomes in comparison to the control patients. In particular, all 8 of the DIP-treated severely ill patients showed remarkable improvement: 7 patients (87.5%) achieved clinical cure and were discharged from the hospitals while the remaining 1 patient (12.5%) was in clinical remission.