New Covid nasal spray outperforms current antibody treatments in mice | Hacker News Reader

New Covid nasal spray outperforms current antibody treatments in mice

news.northwestern.edu

181 pointsgeox64 comments

Giving a mouse a nasal spray must require an incredibly steady hand (unless there's some nonobvious trick to it).

Easy, just put cocaine in the spray and make it mouse-operable.

But what if cocaine is actually treating Covid ? Imagine discovering the cocaine control group is having the same result - would be an interesting plot twist to the pandemic.

That experiment will be defunded just as fast as the rat park.

http://utw10426.utweb.utexas.edu/quest/Q3/ratpark.html

You know, that's not the most unlikely theory. I've wondered why clubs reopening only had seemingly little effect on covid spread...

I’d thought the majority of spread was from intra and inter household contact. i.e. family member spreads to family members, who visit friends, who spread to their family, etc.

Imagine the un-vaccinated/un-masked having all the fun, yet not getting covid...

The universe is indeed unfair.

Picture of mouse receiving intranasal substance.

https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S01660934110005...

That mouse is clearly saying “oooooooooooo!”

Yep, pretty much what I pictured. Mice are small. You just grab it to restrain it and stick the tube where it needs to go. This doesn't require mistreating the animal (any more than any animal testing is considered mistreatment, but that's another discussion), just being firm and deliberate.

Looks an awful lot like the difficult process of trying to give an infant eye drops.

There's a Covid nasal spray being developed by a Finnish company Rokote Laboratories Finland Ltd [1], which is supposed to go into clinical trials after this summer.

[1] https://rokote.com/home.html

Yes, there are covid nasal sprays being developed all over the world. Also Birmingham, Oxford (UK), Tours (France)...

The one you mention is a viral vector vaccine; the mentioned spray sounds more similar to this (incidentally developed by someone from the same lab): https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/pandemics/biological-mask-ad...

What i don't understand is, if it prevents covid for a longer term or just for a few hours. The article mentions that it prevents that the virus can enter cells, but to me it sounds like it only prevents as long as the spray is present?

I am sorry this thread got hijacked. I had the same thought as the OP: vaccines work by training the bodies own defences. The description of this spray sounds more like a disinfectant that prevents the virus from binding to human cells. Can anyone knowledgeable on HN clarify this?

The mucosal immune system in the respiratory tract is the first line of defense against covid. An interstitial injection does not train the mucosal immune system, while a nasal vaccine does. To prevent any infection, the mucosal immune system needs to be primed.

I remember years ago reading horror stories of a similar nasal spray (Tamiflu I think?) causing long-term or permanent loss of smell, and swore I'd never use it since I'd much rather have the flu once than never smell again.

Is that a risk generally with nasal sprays, or something not to worry about?

Seems like it's within sampling error:

https://www.ehealthme.com/ds/tamiflu/loss-of-smell/

Especially when flu itself can cause loss of smell/taste:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-02-21-mn-44059-... (1988)

It's not clear if in those cases the loss lasted after end of use. My guess it resolved on its own.

You're thinking of the experimental zinc sprays that never made it past testing.

I think you're right. Thank you for the clarification!

Flu causes loss of smell too though. Crazy right? By the past 2 years you would think Covid was the only virus ever to cause loss of smell.

At least they added the "... in mice." suffix. So often that is left out.

It would have been much more professional sounding if the testing had been done "in vitro" --- like with Ivermectin.

So it sound like this prevents you from getting infected while the vaccins try to prevent you from becomming very sick.

This sounds familiar... https://science.ubc.ca/news/new-nasal-spray-treats-delta-var...

The question is, does this work in humans? Existing vaccines work better in orangutans than they do in humans. There's a new vaccine which reportedly works great in rabbits. There are quite a few vaccines in development. Working in mice is only a first step.

I use an OTC carrageenan nasal spray which shows some effectiveness in preventing infection. Maybe it’s snake oil going up my nose, maybe not, but I think these types of sprays are a convenient path to getting out of the COVID mess.

Does some know whether the muscouse membranes in the nose differ much between humans and mice? Do they differ more or less then immune system do?

Sounds great, but most drugs fail before Phase III.

Is it normal that mice can get Covid?

It's been fully accepted that most, if not all, mammals can get infected and infect other mammals with Covid-19.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/...

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2013102117

Yes. And in fact the Omicron variant seems to have evolved in mice.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34954396/

There's a widely available OTC nasal spray that has been used for years against various respiratory viruses, which became engaged in a regulatory debate.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nathan-jones-ceo-xlear-inc-11...

> The Government tells people to wash their hands; Yet COVID-19 is an upper respiratory illness. Most COVID-19 infections start in the nose. It makes commonsense to wash your nose. People have been using nasal cleansing to fight respiratory illnesses going back thousands of years.

March 2021, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210324005241/en/Xle...

> Xlear previously filed a pre-EUA seeking approval for use of the nasal spray as a medical device in combatting COVID-19. However, because the FDA determined that Xlear “works against the virus,” the FDA told Xlear it would need to be considered as a drug or combination product EUA. Xlear is currently sold in over 50,000 pharmacies, grocery stores, and online as a nasal spray. “Xlear doesn’t require the EUA to be sold and used—we only need an EUA to be able to inform people about the benefits of using Xlear to protect themselves from COVID-19".

Reminds me of the "we don't need more vaccines" FDA

Did the FDA say this?

Why are you taking the words from a press release as fact?

The EUA process is fairly straightforward. The fact they haven’t gone through it is extremely suspect.

This reads like the radio ad for Navage nasal rinse

Also Betadine Cold Defence, which contains iota carrageenan. But even though it's made in the U.S., the only way to get it is from Canada. (Which is an entirely different product than the Betadine nasal spray that's available in the U.S., which the media has been making fun of people for using.)

Thanks for the pointer. OTC nasal sprays have been used for many years in professions (e.g. dentistry) where there is unavoidable risk of exposure to respiratory viruses.

I feel I read a study about how flushing out your nose with water early and repeatedly when a covid infection starts can knock it back long enough for you to build the immunity to fight it off. Googling irrigation and covid gives you a lot of good hits; I have yet to see a negative one. If I assume competence for no good reason, maybe the government was afraid people would injure themselves?

Here were a couple studies that recruited people:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04347538

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04559035

The existence of a study only indicates that someone secured funding and pushed it through review. COVID was a goldrush for studies with the huge government injection of cash dedicated to research.

There were also early studies suggesting that gargling antiseptic mouthwash had similar effects, but the later studies weren't successful.

Unfortunately, it looks like once the virus is in your airways it moves into the rest of the body too quickly for simple interventions to do much.

By the time you start developing symptoms, in most cases, you're already at peak viral load.

Sorry, but you've been duped by supplement sellers' marketing material.

Xlear is just a branded Xylitol nasal spray. You can go buy it right now if you want. The regulatory action only limited them from claiming that it was effective against COVID without evidence, which is a very good thing. Xylitol is a cheap, common ingredient that supplement makers have been trying to push as a wonder drug for a long time. Xylitol nasal spray does not appear to be an effective COVID treatment.

COVID was a gold rush for supplement marketers. Everyone who wanted to sell more supplements was looking for an angle to suggest that their supplement might be helpful. Pushing press releases to Yahoo Finance and Business Wire is an easy way to get your name out there.

The only hit for "xlear" and "covid" on PubMed is this one case report written by authors with financial ties to Xlear: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33173650/

They only used 3 mild-moderate COVID patients and zero controls:

> We present a series of three mild-moderate risks, symptomatic, COVID-19 patients, treated with the intranasal combination, as an adjuvant to their ongoing treatment, with rapid clinical improvement and shorten time to negativization on repeat intranasal swab test via PCR.

Their claim that it shortened time to negativization doesn't make any sense because they didn't have a control group to compare against.

This is junk supplement marketing material pretending to be science. Please don't promote it.

Thank you for debunking that comment and spelling out the problems. Without this explanation I'd have no idea.

When something sounds too good to be true it's easy to visit https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ and run a search for published literature

However, be careful! Savvy supplement companies will give large ownernship shares to doctors in exchange for essentially manufacturing positive-looking literature and pushing it to pay-to-publish journals. You have to read the conflict of interest sections and have a high degree of suspicion to make sure you're reading a real study instead of astroturfing

At the end of the day, there is no substitute for reading a large amount of primary sources and really trying to understand what's going on.

The problem with this is that you need expertise in the area of interest to know what’s good or bad research, what’s commonly known, and who generally is doing good work. This is too much to ask for the general public in areas like biology, which is why we have experts to filter the information.

The collapse of trust in expertise only widens the possibility for junk to be pushed through, which will result in a terrible self-actualizing cycle. When you see on social media “I did the research and found…”, all that means is someone put something into google and read something that fit a confirmation bias with zero criticality or training on how to interpret what they read.

A large (majority?) part of gaining an expertise is precisely through a large volume of meticulous reading. But I think we're saying the same thing: most people "doing their own research", are not doing meaningful research, partly because it's a herculean undertaking.

I’m sorry, but, to be succinct about that study: lol

Go and read the 3 patient studies they describe.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645297/

Not only was there not a control group, the 3 patients had almost nothing in common. Totally different ages, totally different medical histories.

What an absolute garbage study.

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