 <p class="lead" id="first">A study published in <em>JAMA Network Open</em><em>,</em> from the University of Minnesota, found that a common blood pressure medication -- losartan -- is not effective in reducing lung injury in patients with COVID-19.</p><p>This drug was investigated based on early reports suggesting benefit in preclinical models of the 2003 SARS virus, a close family member to the current SARS-CoV-2 virus. This study was conducted across 12 U.S. academic research institutions.</p><p>The U of M Medical School and School of Public Health research team sought to determine if a common blood pressure medication might decrease lung injury in patients admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. Their results found that losartan treatment did not reduce lung injury in patients admitted with COVID-19, and had no effect on mortality.</p><p>The researchers also found that critically-ill patients treated with losartan needed additional, temporary blood pressure support -- though this did not lead to worse outcomes overall.</p><p>"Even though this particular drug was not effective for the treatment of COVID-19, repurposing inexpensive and relatively safe medications remains an important approach to contain healthcare costs," said Michael Puskarich, MD, an associate professor in emergency medicine at the U of M Medical School and co-author of this study.</p><p>"Finding effective treatments for COVID-19 that can be widely used across both the developed and developing world remains an important ongoing area of investigation," Puskarich said, who is also an emergency physician at Hennepin Healthcare.</p><p>This study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The researchers note that more studies of protein and cellular signaling from ALPS-COVID trial participants are ongoing.</p><p>"We hope that future study findings of these proteins may show insights into why the body responds the way it does to COVID-19," said Christopher Tignanelli, MD, MS, FACS, FAMIA, an assistant professor in surgery at the U of M Medical School and co-author on this study. "Critically, this will help us understand why some people develop severe disease following COVID-19 infection and others are asymptomatic."</p>