COVID-19 patients on statins generally have better outcomes?
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Was talking with a physician today. When we had the obligatory COVID-19 conversation he mentioned that he is proscribing statins like Lipitor for his at risk patients. He said there have been multiple studies supporting the use of statins not as a cure or as a preventative measure, but to help reduce severity.
This was the first I heard about it....
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The good news is that if Covid-19 is a vascular disease, there are existing drugs that can help protect against endothelial cell damage. In another New England Journal of Medicine paper that looked at nearly 9,000 people with Covid-19, Mehra showed that the use of statins and ACE inhibitors were linked to higher rates of survival. Statins reduce the risk of heart attacks not only by lowering cholesterol or preventing plaque, they also stabilize existing plaque, meaning they’re less likely to rupture if someone is on the drugs.
“It turns out that both statins and ACE inhibitors are extremely protective on vascular dysfunction,” Mehra says. “Most of their benefit in the continuum of cardiovascular illness — be it high blood pressure, be it stroke, be it heart attack, be it arrhythmia, be it heart failure — in any situation the mechanism by which they protect the cardiovascular system starts with their ability to stabilize the endothelial cells.”
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Months ago, there was speculation that the SARS-CoV-2 infection is not a simple pulmonary infection, but something much more serious, insidious and sneaky.
Perhaps that's why these "unorthodox" treatments are effective in ameliorating symptoms.
I understand the physiology of statins in this respect, but famotidine? Still don't get that.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@Loki said in COVID-19 patients on statins generally have better outcomes?:
It makes you wonder about every other study you’ve ever read, especially the social science ones.
I've always found that to be such an oxymoron.
With the emphasis on "moron."
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@George-K said in COVID-19 patients on statins generally have better outcomes?:
I understand the physiology of statins in this respect, but famotidine? Still don't get that.
https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/Pepcid-treat-COVID-19/98/i25
“But H2 receptors aren’t just in the stomach—they’re all over the body. Malone and colleagues argue that COVID-19 is disrupting mast cells, which release histamine and other signaling molecules in response to an inflammatory or allergic reaction. These cells can be found at the boundary between tissue and an external environment. They’re on the skin and line the gut and lungs. Malone reasons that mast cells could be responsible for the overactive immune response, often described as the cytokine storm, which does damage to patients with severe cases of COVID-19. By blocking the histamine that mast cells release, famotidine can dampen some of that response.
If famotidine is effective in COVID-19, why isn’t the other commonly used H2 blocker, cimetidine? The answer, Malone claims, comes down to pharmacokinetics: famotidine makes it into the bloodstream more readily than cimetidine.
Adrian M. Piliponsky, an immunologist at Seattle Children’s Research Institute who studies mast cells, says that it’s possible mast cells are playing a role in the inflammatory response to COVID-19. He notes that mast cells play a role in infections with other viruses. He thinks the idea proposed by Malone and colleagues merits further study, and he’s interested in seeing the results of the clinical trial.“Me/rry/Christmas
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@LuFins-Dad thanks for that.
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@Loki said in COVID-19 patients on statins generally have better outcomes?:
It makes you wonder about every other study you’ve ever read...
Ioannidis made his name with a paper called, ironically, ‘Why Most Pubished Research Findings are False’. And his main focuses was medicine and public health, not just social sciences.
It’s the reason I knew who he was before his popular Covid article.
