A Small-Scale Medication of Leflunomide as a Treatment of COVID-19 in an Open-Label Blank-Controlled Clinical Trial.

Virologica Sinica
Ke HuKe Lan

Abstract

We recently reported that inhibitors against human dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH) have broad-spectrum antiviral activities including their inhibitory efficacies on SARS-CoV-2 replication in infected cells. However, there are limited data from clinical studies to prove the application of DHODH inhibitors in Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. In the present study, we evaluated Leflunomide, an approved DHODH inhibitor widely used as a modest immune regulator to treat autoimmune diseases, in treating COVID-19 disease with a small-scale of patients. Cases of 10 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients of moderate type with obvious opacity in the lung were included. Five of the patients were treated with Leflunomide, and another five were treated as blank controls without a placebo. All the patients accepted standard supportive treatment for COVID-19. The patients given Leflunomide had a shorter viral shedding time (median of 5 days) than the controls (median of 11 days, P = 0.046). The patients given Leflunomide also showed a significant reduction in C-reactive protein levels, indicating that immunopathological inflammation was well controlled. No obvious adverse effects were observed in Leflunomide-treated patients, ...Continue Reading

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Citations

Dec 4, 2020·Clinical Infectious Diseases : an Official Publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America·Nicholas J DeVito
Feb 7, 2021·Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases·Alessia AlunnoXavier Mariette
Jun 12, 2021·Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters·Milena M PetrovićMilan D Joksović
Jul 5, 2021·Current Opinion in Virology·Julien SourimantRichard K Plemper
Jul 13, 2021·Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica. B·Rong XiangShibo Jiang
May 31, 2021·Clinical Rheumatology·Behnaz YousefghahariHemmat Gholinia

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
contraception

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