Potential Use of Alpha-1 Anti-trypsin in the Covid-19 Treatment

The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), firstly originated in the city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China, is due to infection by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Guo et al., 2020). SARS-CoV-2 has shown high infectivity, and high mortality associated to respiratory failure from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), becoming rapidly a worldwide health emergency (Guo et al., 2020). In spite of the several efforts of researchers, the limited knowledge on the disease progression and immunological profile, and the absence of medications or vaccines proven to be effective for treatment or prevention of the SARS- CoV-2, lead to the urgent need for efficient and safe therapies, and treatments to limit acute inflammation associated with severe pneumonia and mortality (Mirastschijski et al., 2020). Agents such as potent anti-inflammatory drugs, some antivirals including Remdesevir and, recently, hyperimmune plasma, seem promising, whereas several studies are currently ongoing to test and prove their effectiveness (Guo et al., 2020). Indeed, approved safe therapies with potential ability to control infection and to prevent respiratory complications may be preferential candidates (Zhou et al., 2020), while the range of proposal drugs is rapidly growing (Scalise and Indiveri, 2020; Ye et al., 2020). This approach may readily permit to identify and use safe drugs, until knowledge on the viral biology will allow to identify specific SARS-CoV-2 drugs and/or vaccines.