Statins are prescribed to lower cholesterol levels. High blood lipid levels are often associated with diseases of the cardiovascular system. Patients taking these drugs therefore belong to the particularly vulnerable risk group for severe courses of COVID-19 infection. On the one hand, previous studies have shown that there is an association between statin use and lower COVID-19 mortality. On the other hand, statins are thought to enhance expression of the ACE2 receptor of SARS-CoV-2, which the virus uses to dock to the cell membrane. What influence this has on cell entry and replication of the virus was not known until now.
Gisa Gerold's team first investigated how well cells pre-treated with various lipid-lowering agents can be infected with coronavirus 229E in the laboratory. This harmless cold virus is closely related to SARS-CoV-2. "Cells that were treated with statins were infected with coronavirus 229E to a lesser extent," says Gerold, a virologist. "We observed this effect most clearly for the drug fluvastatin."
The researchers then verified these observations in experiments with the "real" SARS-CoV-2 in the high-security laboratory. "In particular, we measured lower concentrations of the virus in the culture fluid of cells pretreated with fluvastatin," Gerold says. This suggests that fluvastatin does not have an enhancing effect on the susceptibility of cells to the virus, he said. These findings were confirmed in airway epithelial cultures from three donors. However, since statins can also modulate immune responses, the team plans to test more complex SARS-CoV-2 infection models for the effect of statins in follow-up studies.
In summary, Gisa Gerold says, "We were able to show that statin therapy has no adverse effects on the potential infection of lung epithelial cells with the new SARS coronavirus. Even though we observed only a mild positive effect, we can at least conclude that statin use can be safely continued."
Original news at TWINCORE - Center for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research
Original publication
Francisco J. Zapatero-Belinchón, Rebecca Moeller, Lisa Lasswitz, Marco van Ham, Miriam Becker, Graham Brogden, Ebba Rosendal, Wenjie Bi, Belén Carriquí-Madroñal, Koushikul Islam, Annasara Lenman, Antonia P. Gunesch, Jared Kirui, Thomas Pietschmann, Anna K. Överby, Lothar Jänsch, Gisa Gerold. Fluvastatin mitigates SARS-CoV-2 infection in human lung cells. iScience, DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103469
