학술논문
Efficacy and Safety of Lithium Treatment in SARS-CoV-2 Infected Patients
Document Type
article
Author
Carlos Spuch; Marta López-García; Tania Rivera-Baltanás; J. J Cabrera-Alvargonzález; Sudhir Gadh; Daniela Rodrigues-Amorim; Tania Álvarez-Estévez; Almudena Mora; Marta Iglesias-Martínez-Almeida; Luis Freiría-Martínez; Maite Pérez-Rodríguez; Alexandre Pérez-González; Ana López-Domínguez; María Rebeca Longueira-Suarez; Adrián Sousa-Domínguez; Alejandro Araújo-Ameijeiras; David Mosquera-Rodríguez; Manuel Crespo; Dolores Vila-Fernández; Benito Regueiro; Jose Manuel Olivares
Source
Frontiers in Pharmacology, Vol 13 (2022)
Subject
Language
English
ISSN
1663-9812
Abstract
At the beginning of the pandemic, we observed that lithium carbonate had a positive effect on the recovery of severely ill patients with COVID-19. Lithium is able to inhibit the replication of several types of viruses, some of which are similar to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, increase the immune response and reduce inflammation by preventing or reducing the cytokine storm. Previously, we published an article with data from six patients with severe COVID-19 infection, where we proposed that lithium carbonate could be used as a potential treatment for COVID-19. Now, we set out to conduct a randomized clinical trial number EudraCT 2020–002008–37 to evaluate the efficacy and safety of lithium treatment in patients infected with severe SARS-CoV-2. We showed that lithium was able to reduce the number of days of hospital and intensive care unit admission as well as the risk of death, reduces inflammatory cytokine levels by preventing cytokine storms, and also reduced the long COVID syndromes. We propose that lithium carbonate can be used to reduce the severity of COVID-19.