Reflections on the Special Experiment in General Medicine of the Non-Specific Antiviral Drug, and Authorized as Antitussive, Cloperastine. Talking Advantage of the Opportunity to Study its Effects on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19)
Abstract
Cloperastine represents a special case on the list of drug repurposing potentially useful for treating COVID-19 in the early stages of the disease at the community or general practice level. Cloperastine is an antitussive drug marketed worldwide and especially by countries in North America, Europe, Japan, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and Australia. The most common symptom of COVID-19 is cough. Therefore cloperastine already has the indication for its use in COVID-19. This supposes a comparative advantage over the rest of potentially useful reusable drugs for COVID-19, which may be indicated in comorbidities of the patient with COVID, but are not indicated for COVID-19 itself. Cloperastine is also a non-specific antiviral drug and has an action on the Sigma-1 receptor, which specifically resides in the endoplasmic reticulum membrane-associated with mitochondria. In addition, cloperastine is a type 1 sodium-dependent glucose cotransporter inhibitor, blocking glucose uptake in lung cells. A proposal is made to study the hypothesis of the potential effect of cloperastine in COVID-19, to assess the outcome of exposure to this drug (duration of symptoms, severity, hospitalization, viral load, etc.), in retrospective case-control studies and prospectively -and this possibility is a distinctive case of cloperastine compared to the rest of potentially useful drugs in the treatment of COVID-19-, through clinical trials, taking advantage of the special experiment of its authorized prescription from of the approved indication of cloperastine in the treatment of cough.