The review considers the role that selenium plays in RNA virus infections and, in particular, COVID-19. Many RNA viruses are selenium dependent because antisense interactions arise between viral RNAs and host mRNA regions containing the selencysteine insertion sequence to cause selenium deficiency, oxidative stress, immune response impairment, etc. Sodium selenite is a licensed selenium-containing product and is widely used in medicine, veterinary, and agriculture. Its advantages include the following. Sodium selenite rapidly penetrates through cell membranes in all tissues of the body; is intensely involved in metabolic processes accompanied by oxidation of sulfur-containing cell proteins; exerts an antiaggregation effect by reducing thromboxane activity; interrupts the contact of a virion (SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2) with the membrane of a healthy cell; and suppresses NF-κB activity, which significantly increases in coronavirus infections. Arguments supporting the use of sodium selenite as adjuvant therapy in COVID-19 are discussed.
Keywords: COVID-19; RNA viruses; glutathione peroxidase; oxidative stress; sodium selenite; thioredoxin reductase.
© Pleiades Publishing, Inc. 2022, ISSN 0006-3509, Biophysics, 2022, Vol. 67, No. 5, pp. 775–778. © Pleiades Publishing, Inc., 2022.Russian Text © The Author(s), 2022, published in Biofizika, 2022, Vol. 67, No. 5, pp. 960–965.