Efficacy and Safety of Nebulized Ethanol Inhalation in COVID-19 Treatment. A Randomized, Clinical Trial

Abstract

Background: Considering anti coronavirus effects of ethanol, the efficacy of its administration was evaluated in this research. Because of respiratory tract entrance of virus in COVID-19, this study was done by inhalation of nebulized ethanol. Methods: 99 positive SARS-CoV-2-PCR patients who had been admitted at a respiratory clinic were included in this study. Patients were randomly assigned to the control (distilled water spray) and intervention (35% ethanol spray) group. Both groups were instructed to inhale 3 puffs of spray and inhale it, every six hours for a week. Global symptomatic score (GSS), clinical status scale, Blood Oxygenation, and C-Reactive Protein (CRP) at the first visit and days 3, 7, 14 were measured and compared between groups. Results: The GSS decreased more and faster in the intervention group (ethanol) (1.4+1.4 vs 2.3+1.7, P=0.035) two weeks after starting intervention. On day 14, the odds of intervention group to have better clinical status was 5.715 times (95% CI, 2.47 to 13.19) than of control group a statistically significant effect, Wald χ2 (1) =16.67, P =0.001. Blood oxygen saturation also improved earlier in the ethanol group but without statistical significance difference. The readmission rate was lower in the intervention group (zero vs 10.9%, P=0.02). Conclusion: Inhaled ethanol seems to be effective in improvement, mitigating clinical symptoms and reducing the need to repeat treatment. Considering the low cost, availability and no significant adverse events of ethanol, research and additional efforts are recommended to evaluate its curative effects in the early stages of COVID-19.

Positive Correlation between Heavy Alcoholic Drinking and SARS-Cov-2 Not-infection Rate

“…There are solid proofs that ethanol has strong virucidal effect against SARS-CoV-2 [5,9]. There are also some attempt to prevent [10] or treat [11] Covid-19 using alcohol. But there are many other explanations as well.…”