Guiga A* and Ghannouchi N

Department of Internal Medicine, Farhat Hached Hospital, Sousse, Tunisia

*Corresponding Author: Guiga A, Department of Internal Medicine, Farhat Hached Hospital, Sousse, Tunisia.

Received: May 12, 2021; Published: June 12, 2021

Citation: Guiga A and Ghannouchi N. “Pentoxifylline: A Cheap and Safe Drug for COVID19?". Acta Scientific Microbiology 5.7 (2021): 36.

Keywords: Pentoxifylline; Covid 19; Cytokines

  Pentoxifylline (PTX), a methil-xantine that inhibits phosphodiesterase IV, has long been used in the treatment of obliterant peripheral arteriopathy and circulatory alterations related with arteriosclerosis, diabetes or inflammation [1,2]. This low cost drug present minimal side effects and low toxicity usually reported in chronic use and it have an interesting immunomodulatory, bronchodilatory, anti-inflammatory and antiviral properties. The principal mechanism of these properties is the reduction of TNF-ɑ, IL-1, IL-6 and IL-8 [3]. These properties are confirmed in vitro but efficacy of PTX in vivo is controversial; for some authors, the weak anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory action in vivo is due to the low serum concentrations of the drug at usual doses and they propose the use of high dose ou continuous vein perfusion of PTX to increase efficacity in vivo.

Bibliography

1. Maiti R., et al. “Effect of Pentoxifylline on inflammatory burden, oxidative stress and platelet aggregability in hypertensive type 2 diabetes mellitus patients”. Vascular Pharmacology2-3 (2007): 118-124.
2. SL Lin., et al. “Pentoxifylline attenuated the renal disease progression in rats with remnant kidney”. Journal of the American Society of Nephrology12 (2002): 2916-2929.
3. Neuner P., et al. “Pentoxifylline in vivo and in vitro down-regulates the expression of the intercellular adhesion molecule-1 in monocytes”. Immunology3 (1997): 435-439.
4. Coomes EA and Haghbayan H. “Interleukin-6 in Covid-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis”. Reviews in Medical Virology 6 (2020): 1-9.

Copyright: © 2021 Guiga A and Ghannouchi N. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.