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Simvastatin treatment showed no prophylactic effect in influenza virus‐infected mice
Author(s) -
Glück Brigitte,
Schmidtke Michaela,
Walther Mario,
Meerbach Astrid,
Wutzler Peter
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of medical virology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.782
H-Index - 121
eISSN - 1096-9071
pISSN - 0146-6615
DOI - 10.1002/jmv.23682
Subject(s) - virology , simvastatin , virus , orthomyxoviridae , medicine , influenza a virus , biology , pharmacology
Simvastatin, a cholesterol‐lowering drug, is reported to have immunomodulatory properties that attenuated acute lung injury independent of their major lipid lowering effects. Based on these reports, simvastatin is expected to be used for influenza prophylaxis and treatment. The present study evaluated the efficacy of simvastatin against influenza A/PR/8/34 virus infection in a murine model. In a first study, simvastatin was administered orally. To achieve high plasma levels, intraperitoneal application was used in a second study. Survival, body weight loss, viral titers in lung and trachea, and histologic lung injury were measured. Surprisingly, treatment with simvastatin resulted in lower survival rates and in more distinct body mass loss in comparison to virus‐infected control mice. Furthermore, the viral load in lungs and tracheas as well as histopathological lesions were not reduced by simvastatin. Overall, these results showed that simvastatin failed to protect mice against influenza virus infection. J Med. Virol. 85:1978–1982, 2013 . © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.