LSU Health, a renowned public university focused on health sciences, has now reportedly become one of the first centers of the U.S. to start the enrollment of coronavirus patients in a global trial to test the use of nitric oxide to enhance outcomes for coronavirus patients with highly damaged lungs.

LSU Health’s Critical Care and Emergency Medicine division of the Department of Medicine would conduct these trials by using inhaled nitric oxide gas, to kill coronavirus present in the damaged lungs and subsequently increase the delivery of oxygen in injured tissues.

Vice-Chancellor of Research, LSU Health Shreveport, Dr. Chris Kevil stated that inhaled nitric oxide had earlier been recommended to reduce original SARS-CoV infectivity more than a decade ago, however, its impact on SARS-CoV2 is still not known. Furthermore, research published from LSU Health Shreveport has demonstrated that nitric oxide is a powerful protector to tackle tissue hypoxia, that occurs in severe COVID-1 infection.    

collaborating with the Critical Care and Emergency Medicine division in the study are the Division of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine at UAB (University of Alabama-Birmingham) and the Department of Anesthesia at MGH (Massachusetts General Hospital) as being one of the first centers in the United States to register patients in the trial.

Principal Investigator of the nitric oxide clinical study, Keith Scott, M.D., MSc, FCCM stated that the university has confidence that this treatment would alter the effects of coronavirus but it should first be tested.

Dr. Scott further added that the nitric gas is already authorized by FDA, so if these trials show promising results, the wide-scale treatment would start immediately.

Steven Conrad, M.D., Ph.D., ME, MS, MSST, MBA, MSC, is also teaming up with Keith Scott in this study. Dr. Scott stated that Dr. Conrad brings substantial knowledge and research experience when it comes to working with patients that are critically ill.

According to Dr. Lorenzo Berra, critical-care specialist, Massachusetts General Hospital, during the coronavirus outbreak in Italy, the nitric oxide gas was used but under less-controlled conditions from a research perspective. The treatment, however, showed a dramatic boost in oxygen in the blood of coronavirus patients. But Berra also added that it would also take more testing to realize how much amount of nitric oxide is needed.

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