Clinical trials underway for promising new COVID-19 treatment that wouldn’t face FDA hurdle

A handful of hospitals have started clinical trials to test a new treatment for the coronavirus.

Hospitals in Boston, Alabama, Louisiana, Sweden and Austria are testing nitric oxide, a gas that relaxes blood vessels and could improve breathing, on patients with mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19.

“It’s a gas that typically is used in babies with high lung pressure,” said Dr. Pankaj Arora, who is helping to administer the trial at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “It’s FDA-approved for use in babies with high lung pressure, and we use it in some of our adult patients. In cardiology, we use it in our adult patients when the pulmonary pressures, pressures in the lungs, are very high.”

The molecule, which is not the same as nitrous oxide or laughing gas, is already used to treat heart disease, erectile dysfunction and respiratory illness.

“We have tremendous confidence this therapy will alter the devastating effects of COVID-19 but we must test it," Dr. Keith Scott, principal investigator at Louisiana State University Health in Shreveport. "If results show promise, and since this gas is already FDA approved, widespread use could begin immediately.”

The treatment has shown promise on COVID-19 patients in Italy, and a second trial at Massachusetts General Hospital examines whether the gas can mitigate the onset of the virus for health care workers constantly exposed to coronavirus patients.

UAB's trial builds on research conducted during the SARS epidemic in 2002-2003, when doctors found the gas improved lung function and also showed some anti-virus properties.

“The current [coronavirus] is quite similar to the one which was there in 2002-2003, and back then they tested this gas in patients of SARS and found that they were doing exceptionally well,” Dr. Vibhu Parcha, who is also administering UAB's trial, “and they further tested it and they found that this gas was also causing prevention of the growth of the virus.”