A very interesting article published in Nature.com on 31st October discussed the ongoing research on the development of COVID-19 nasal sprays that may help block the virus.
Professor Anne Moscona and her colleagues at Columbia University may have found a compound that might work to prevent COVID-19. No, it isn’t another vaccine formulation, this solution (if proven to work) will take the form of a nasal spray.
How would they work as a preventative measure?
How regular nasal sprays work depends substantially upon their active ingredients. For example:
- Antihistamine nasal sprays work by blocking the effects of histamine that results in unwanted symptoms like sneezing, itching, and nasal congestion when exposed to allergens.
- Decongestant nasal sprays relieve your stuffy nose by temporarily shrinking the blood vessels inside the nose.
- Saline nasal sprays are the simplest type of nasal spray for allergies because they aren’t a medication. They contain a saline solution to help loosen mucus and debris inside the nose to clear congestion and blockages.
Not to be confused with any of the above, the proposed COVID-19 nasal spray would contain short-lived compounds that would block the virus’s ability to enter cells. Unlike vaccines, which are designed to program our immune system to build immunity that may last for a few months, the COVID-19 nasal spray (if proven to work), would be ‘fast-acting and applied frequently, perhaps once or twice a day, to the site where the virus first takes hold – the nasal lining and throat’.
Professor Moscona and her colleagues describe the spray as, ‘a peptide that gums up the virus’s machinery for fusing with a host cell. This prevents the virus from delivering its genetic payload into the cell, thus blocking infection.’.
Professor Richard Leduc, a molecular pharmacologist at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada, has developed another nasal-spray compound that inhibits a host enzyme needed by viral particles to fuse with a target cell.
How would we benefit from such nasal sprays?
The nasal sprays could offer people an easier and more accessible method to avoid infection aside from wearing a face mask, especially in high-risk settings like hospitals, aged care homes and schools.
It could help offset the declining uptake of the 3rd and 4th COVID-19 vaccines even after the introduction of Moderna’s bivalent formulation.
That said, the COVID-19 nasal sprays have a long way to go before they are proven to be effective. They must prove to be adept at coating any surface to which a virus may attach. Once the viral particles breach even a few cells, a full-scale infection can progress rapidly.
This is a space worth watching as we move forward.
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