[ES] Carta al editor en la que se expresan las ventajas de utilizar selenio en los tratamientos terapéuticos del SARS-CoV-2

Atanasio Pandiella, Alonso

Benarba, Bachir

English

Since the COVID-19 outbreaks in China and due to the important number of infected cases
and related deaths, various strategies have been proposed to be used to fight the pandemic including supplements (Krajewska et al., 2020). In spite of several ongoing trials, no efficient
drugs have been validated till now. An optimal and equilibrated immune response in infected
individuals seems to be a promising preventive and therapeutic alternative. Actually, it has been
suggested that besides the close relationship of Chinese populations with wildlife and related
dietary traditions, selenium deficiency was the cause of the SARS-CoV-1 spread due to its
involvement in viral mutations (Qureshi, 2016). Selenium deficiency was suspected to be associated with enhanced virulence of SARS since previous studies have shown that this deficiency
was linked to higher mutation rate and virulence of coxsackievirus B3 and influenza and poliovirus. Several studies showed that selenium supplementation resulted in enhanced immune
response in adults with or without viral infections (Jayawardena et al., 2020). Furthermore, such
supplementation was found to effectively suppress the HIV-1 viral load (Hurwitz et al., 2007).Peer reviewe

Pandiella, Atanasio

Digital.CSIC

EXCLI Journal 2020;19:1544-1546 – ISSN 1611-2156 Received: September 30, 2020, accepted: December 07, 2020, published: December 07, 2020   1544 Letter to the editor: WHAT ABOUT INCORPORATING SELENIUM IN THE  THERAPEUTIC REGIMEN OF SARS-COV-2?  Bachir Benarba1,*, Atanasio Pandiella2  1 Laboratory Research on Biological Systems and Geomatics, Faculty of Nature and Life Sciences, University of Mascara, Algeria; bachirsb@yahoo.fr  2 Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular del Cáncer, CSIC-IBSAL-Universidad de Salamanca, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Salamanca, Spain; atanasio@usal.es  * Corresponding author: Bachir Benarba, Laboratory Research on Biological Systems  and Geomatics, Faculty of Nature and Life Sciences, University of Mascara, Algeria,  Tel.: 213 6 59319213; E-mail: bachirsb@yahoo.fr   http://dx.doi.org/10.17179/excli2020-2968  This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License  (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).   Dear Editor, Since the COVID-19 outbreaks in China and due to the important number of infected cases and related deaths, various strategies have been proposed to be used to fight the pandemic in-cluding supplements (Krajewska et al., 2020). In spite of several ongoing trials, no efficient drugs have been validated till now. An optimal and equilibrated immune response in infected individuals seems to be a promising preventive and therapeutic alternative. Actually, it has been suggested that besides the close relationship of Chinese populations with wildlife and related dietary traditions, selenium deficiency was the cause of the SARS-CoV-1 spread due to its involvement in viral mutations (Qureshi, 2016). Selenium deficiency was suspected to be asso-ciated with enhanced virulence of SARS since previous studies have shown that this deficiency was linked to higher mutation rate and virulence of coxsackievirus B3 and influenza and po-liovirus. Several studies showed that selenium supplementation resulted in enhanced immune response in adults with or without viral infections (Jayawardena et al., 2020). Furthermore, such supplementation was found to effectively suppress the HIV-1 viral load (Hurwitz et al., 2007). Indeed, selenium possesses an important antioxidant potential through its incorporation in var-ious selenoenzymes such as glutathione peroxidase able to breakdown hydrogen peroxide (Medeiros-Neto and Rubio, 2016). Accordingly, selenium deficiency, which is common among patients with viral infections, results in an enhanced reactive oxygen species production leading to an increased oxidative stress which promotes a decreased immune response, promotes viral mutations and an increased virulence. Selenium supplementation significantly improves the immunocompetence of infected hosts and decreases viral mutations leading to lowered viru-lence (Harthill, 2011). These properties of selenium led to its incorporation into a novel pa-tented antiviral treatment called Gene-Eden-VIR/Novirin (Polansky and Lori, 2020). Further-more, the immune boosting properties of selenium led to its incorporation into a herbal im-muno-modulator drug used efficiently against viral respiratory diseases (Arastoo et al., 2014). Interestingly, it has been recently demonstrated that selenium intake was positively associated EXCLI Journal 2020;19:1544-1546 – ISSN 1611-2156 Received: September 30, 2020, accepted: December 07, 2020, published: December 07, 2020   1545 with telomere length in adults (Shu et al., 2020). It would also be interesting to experimentally analyze the action of selenium on viral infectiveness using in vitro and in vivo animal models. Recently, selenium deficiency besides vitamin D deficiency was found to be characteristic of Korean COVID-19 patients. In fact, selenium deficiency was found in 42 of COVID-19 patients whereas their vitamins B, folate and zinc levels were not decreased. Interestingly, se-lenium deficiency was found in 100 of severe COVID-19 patients against 44.4 in those with mild COVID-19 (without pneumonia) suggesting that selenium deficiency may weaken the immune system and thereby result in increasing the severity of the disease (Im et al., 2020). Likewise, Majeed et al. (2020) found that Indian COVID-19 patients had lower selenium levels (69.2 ± 8.7 ng/ml) when compared to healthy individuals (79.1 ± 10.9 ng/ml). In another cross sectional study, Se (selenium) deficiency was found in 44.4 of COVID-19 German patients. On the other hand, Se deficiency was also found to be correlated with survival rates since 64.7 of non-survivors were deficient in Se against 39.96 of survivors (Moghaddam et al., 2020). Fur-thermore, serum selenium levels were demonstrated to be an important predictor of survival among COVID-19 patients. Actually, it has been demonstrated that unimpaired Se transporter selenoprotein P and Zn status was predictor of high survival in COVID-19 patients suggesting that Se and/or Zn supplementation may be a promising approach (Heller et al., 2020). There-fore, intervention studies are needed to investigate whether a Se supplementation may prevent severe complications of the COVID-19, and related death. Besides, the prognostic value of Se status using serum Se and SELENOP levels may be a promising alternative, especially in Se-deficient patients.  Hence, we suggest that patients with COVID-19 may be at higher risk for selenium defi-ciency and, therefore, their selenium status should be assessed. Moreover, we suggest incorpo-rating selenium supplementation to enhance their immune response and reduce the SARS-CoV-2 virulence.    Conflict of interest The authors declare no conflict of interest.  REFERENCES Arastoo M, Khorshid H, Radmanesh R, Gharibdoust F. Combination of IMOD™ and Arbidol to increase their immunomodulatory effects as a novel medicine to pre-vent and cure influenza and some other infectious dis-eases. J Med Hypothes. 2014;8(2):53-56. Harthill M. Review: Micronutrient selenium defi-ciency influences evolution of some viral infectious diseases. Biol Trace Elem Res. 2011;143:1325–36. Heller RA, Sun Q, Hackler J, Seelig J, Seibert L, Cher-kezov A., et al. Prediction of survival odds in COVID-19 by zinc, age and selenoprotein P as composite bi-omarker. Redox Biol. 2020;38:101764. Hurwitz BE, Klaus JR, Llabre MM, Gonzalez A, Law-rence P, Maher KJ. Suppression of human immunode-ficiency virus type 1 viral load with selenium supple-mentation: a randomized controlled trial. Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:148-54. Im JH, Je YS, Baek J, Chung MH, Kwon HY, Lee JS. Nutritional status of patients with COVID-19. Int J In-fect Dis. 2020;100:390-3.  Jayawardena R, Sooriyaarachchi P, Chourdakis M, Jeewandara C, Ranasinghe P. Enhancing immunity in viral infections, with special emphasis on COVID-19: A review. Diabetes Metab Syndr. 2020;14:367–82. Krajewska J, Krajewski W, Zub K, Zatoński T. COVID-19 in otolaryngologist practice: A review of current knowledge. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2020; 277:1885–97. Majeed M, Nagabhushanam K, Gowda S, Mundkur L. An exploratory study of selenium status in normal sub-jects and COVID-19 patients in South Indian popula-tion: Case for adequate selenium status. Nutrition. 2020;epub ahead of print. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2020.111053. Medeiros-Neto G, Rubio IGS. Iodine-deficiency disor-ders. In: Jameson JL, De Groot LJ, de Kretser DM, et al. (eds.): Endocrinology: Adult and pediatric. 7th ed. (pp 1584-1600.e3). Amsterdam: W.B. Saunders, 2016.  EXCLI Journal 2020;19:1544-1546 – ISSN 1611-2156 Received: September 30, 2020, accepted: December 07, 2020, published: December 07, 2020   1546 Moghaddam A, Heller RA, Sun Q, Seelig J, Cherkezov A, Seibert L, et al. Selenium deficiency is associated with mortality risk from COVID-19. Nutrients. 2020;12(7):2098. Polansky H, Lori G. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): First indication of efficacy of Gene-Eden-VIR/Novirin in SARS-CoV-2 infection. Int J An-timicrob Agents. 2020;55(6):105971.  Qureshi AI. Ebola virus disease epidemic in light of other epidemics. Ebola Vir Dis. 2016;2016:39–65.  Shu Y, Wu M, Yang S, Wang Y, Li H. Association of dietary selenium intake with telomere length in middle-aged and older adults. Clin Nutr. 2020;39:3086-91.   

What about incorporating selenium in the therapeutic regimen of SARS-CoV-2?

Pandiella Alonso, Atanasio

Gestion del Repositorio Documental de la Universidad de Salamanca

Letter to the editor:  What about incorporating selenium in the therapeutic regimen of SARS-COV-2?

https://gredos.usal.es/bitstream/10366/145495/1/Benarba_Selenium%20in%20SARS-COV-2.pdf

Letter to the editor: What about incorporating selenium in the therapeutic regimen of SARS-COV-2?

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