Harvoni (a cure for hepatitis C) also cures covid

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An antiviral drug combination used to treat hepatitis C and an anti-protozoal drug may also work against SARS-CoV-2, researchers say.

Sofosbuvir/ledipasvir (Harvoni) and nitazoxanide (Alinia) both appeared to clear SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 in a preliminary trial, said Mohammed Medhat, lecturer in the department of gastroenterology and tropical medicine at Assiut University Hospitals in Assiut, Egypt.

Sofosbuvir/ledipasvir was particularly efficacious, said Medhat, who reported the results at the International Liver Congress 2021.

"This is a very important result," he told Medscape Medical News. "If you start this drug early, you can eliminate the virus easily without complication and avoid mortality and also avoid spreading of the disease."

While the treatments for COVID-19 have improved since the pandemic began and vaccines have slowed its spread in some countries, existing therapies, including the antiviral drug remdesivir (Veklury), fall far short of a cure.

Developing new drugs takes a long time because their pharmacokinetics must be analyzed, and safety as well as efficacy tested in large trials, Medhat pointed out.

"Trying to use available and safe and effective drugs to treat this new disease is the fastest way," he said.

Repositioning Drugs as Possible Treatment for COVID-19
SARS-CoV-2 shares similarities to the hepatitis C virus in the way it replicates, Medhat said. Molecular docking studies, which use computation to find ligands that bind to proteins, suggested that both sofosbuvir/ledipasvir and nitazoxanide might block key proteins in SARS-CoV-2.

Sofosbuvir/ledipasvir was developed to treat hepatitis C. Nitazoxanide is currently used to treat protozoal infections but has shown broad-spectrum antiviral properties. It has been investigated as a treatment for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and influenza as well as hepatitis C, Medhat said.

Since both are manufactured in Egypt and relatively inexpensive, Medhat and his colleagues investigated them as a possible treatment for patients with COVID-19. Sofosbuvir/ledipasvir costs about $40, and nitazoxanide costs about $10 for 14 days of treatment.

They randomly divided 190 patients with mild and moderate COVID-19 infections into three groups. All three groups received standard care. One group also received sofosbuvir/ledipasvir, and another group also received nitazoxanide.

The researchers used reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to test the patients at intervals of 5, 8, 11, and 14 days