Hypertonic saline solution inhibits SARS-CoV-2 in vitro assay

We are facing an unprecedented global health crisis caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). At this date more than 680 thousand people have died due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Unfortunately, until now no effective treatment to combat the virus and vaccine are available. We performed experiments to test if hypertonic saline solution is able to inhibit virus replication in vitro. Our data shows that 260 mM NaCl (1.5%) inhibits 100% SARS-CoV-2 replication in Vero cells. Furthermore, our results suggest that the virus replication inhibition is due to an intracellular mechanism and not due to the dissociation between spike SARS-CoV-2 protein and its human receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 interaction. NaCl depolarizes the plasma membrane supposedly associated with the inhibition of the SARS-CoV-2 life cycle. This observation could lead to simple, safe and low cost interventions at various stages of COVID-19 treatment, improving the prognosis of infected patients, thereby mitigating the social and economic costs of the pandemic.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  bioRxiv

• Publication date

  2020-08-04

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1101/2020.08.04.235549
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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