Icosapent Ethyl - A Successful Treatment for Symptomatic COVID-19 Infection

Amnon A Berger; Robert Sherburne; Ivan Urits; Haresh Patel; Jonathan Eskander

doi:10.7759/cureus.10211

Icosapent Ethyl - A Successful Treatment for Symptomatic COVID-19 Infection

Cureus. 2020 Sep 2;12(9):e10211. doi: 10.7759/cureus.10211.

Authors

Amnon A Berger¹, Robert Sherburne², Ivan Urits¹, Haresh Patel³, Jonathan Eskander⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
² Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
³ Critical Care Medicine, Maryview Medical Center, Portsmouth, USA.
⁴ Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Portsmouth Anesthesia Associates, Portsmouth, USA.

Abstract

COVID-19 is a fatal, universal pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has directly caused at least 95,235 deaths in the US by May 2020. It has a poor prognosis with a mortality rate as high as 21% in the general population at the height of the pandemic, a rate that is much higher in elderly patients, as well as those requiring intensive care unit (ICU) care. The role of inflammation in symptomatic COVID-19 is being studied, and it is hypothesized that hyper-inflammation is a causative factor in severe COVID-19 disease. Treatment options are limited and mostly rely on supportive care. Icosapent ethyl (IPE) is an Omega-3 fatty acid derivative that has been shown to significantly reduce cardiovascular mortality and is used as an adjunct to statin therapy. Though it has been shown to act as an anti-inflammatory, it is not currently indicated for that purpose. Here, we describe, for the first time, the successful treatment of a COVID-19 patient with IPE.

Keywords: ards (acute respiratory distress syndrome); covid-19; cytokine release syndrome (crs); hypertriglyceridemia; inflammation; omega-3.

Publication types

Case Reports