The immune system deteriorates with age, making COVID-19 particularly deadly in older people—but to date, no clinically available medication addresses this key risk factor. A study published today in Nature shows that an oral drug that reverses multiple aspects of immune aging effectively prevents death in a mouse model of COVID-19, suggesting that the medication could be used to protect the elderly patients who are at greatest risk in the pandemic.
In the study, daily doses of BGE-175 (asapiprant) protected aged mice from a lethal dose of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Ninety percent of mice that received the drug survived, whereas all untreated control mice died. BGE-175 treatment was initiated two days after infection, when the mice were already ill, a time-frame relevant to real-life clinical situations in which patients would receive medication only after becoming symptomatic.
The mouse model used in the study closely mirrored the pathological progression of human COVID-19. The mouse-adapted strain of SARS-CoV-2 generated by the researchers caused a disease that shared many of the hallmarks of human COVID-19: accumulation of fluid in the air sacs of the lungs, extensive infiltration of lung tissue by immune cells, and high levels of pro-inflammatory factors called cytokines.
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