Therefore, the use of antiviral nasal sprays would contribute to reduce nasal and nasopharyngeal viral load, thus slowing down the disease progression in the treated patient and the disease transmission to others in close contact with him or her.Ĭarrageenans are linear sulfated polysaccharides that are often extracted from red seaweeds. Recent data show that high viral load and a long virus-shedding period was associated with severe COVID-19. There are no adequate therapeutic or preventive medicines available, so effective therapeutic approaches are urgently needed to reduce the spread of the virus and its death toll.ĭuring the first days of disease the virus is localized mainly in the nasal cavity and the nasopharynx. Even children can be affected although with milder symptoms than adults and can be transmitters of the disease.
However, 15% of patients develop severe pneumonia that requires hospitalization and oxygen support, and 5% of them need admission to an intensive care unit (ICU). In most cases, COVID-19 manifests itself clinically with flu-like symptoms as a mild or uncomplicated illness, eventually resolving spontaneously. COVID-19 has become one of the worst pandemics of our time counting more than 12.232,700 confirmed cases and more than 554,000 deaths worldwide by July 10 th, 2020. SARS-CoV-2 is a single stranded positive sense RNA virus responsible for COVID-19. Xylitol at a concentration of 5 % m/V has proved to be viricidal on its own and the association with iota-carrageenan may be beneficial, as well. The concentrations found to be active in vitro against SARS-CoV-2 may be easily achieved by the application of nasal sprays already marketed in several countries. We have found that iota-carrageenan in concentrations as low as 6 µg/ mL inhibits SARS-CoV-2 infection in Vero cell cultures. The main objective of our study was to test the antiviral action of three candidate nasal spray formulations against SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, a nasal spray may be a suitable dosage form for this purpose.
The nasal cavity and the rhinopharynx are the sites of initial replication of SARS-CoV-2. There is an urgent unmet need to provide an easy-to-produce, affordable medicine to prevent transmission and provide early treatment for this disease. COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) is a pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2) infection affecting millions of persons around the world.