Is ibuprofen a cure for deadly septicaemia?
Ilearned through personal experience how lethal septicaemia can be when I contracted it a few years ago. It occurs when bacteria, which have got into the bloodstream from some focus of infection like a wound or abscess, multiply very fast.
They also produce toxins potent enough to make kidneys fail and stop hearts beating.
Because of the overwhelming nature of the blood poisoning, the immune system goes into overdrive and starts to destroy the body and its vital organs as well as the bacteria.
Each year, more than 147,000 people in the UK contract septicaemia, an overwhelming immune response to infection. It kills as many as half of those who get it, sometimes within days. As the number of cases rises, particularly in intensive care units, pharmaceutical companies have been scrambling to develop a drug to combat the condition. But the answer could be close to home.
When I read that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen and naproxen (of which aspirin is a close relative) might prevent the worst effects of this overwhelming immune response to blood poisoning, I rushed to scour the evidence first hand.
Professor Hang Hubert Yin from the University of Orlando, USA, claims to have found how NSAIDs work and so could have a huge impact in septicaemia where bacteria penetrate cells and prompt them to commit suicide.
In septicaemia, the blood is teeming with bacteria so cells die in their millions when bacteria enter them. Widespread cell death causes potentially fatal inflammation.
In the latest lab experiments NSAIDs have proven effective in preventing cell death. Yin’s research found that a subgroup of very powerful NSAIDs acts strongly and independently on aggressive immune responses and so have a key role to play in septicaemia.
It’s an oversimplification to say that existing NSAIDs, like aspirin, ibuprofen and the rest would be strong enough, even in high doses, to treat septicaemia. The risk of side effects at such high doses may be too great, said Yin.
But he’s already working on followup studies looking at whether new septicaemia drugs could be developed combining NSAIDs and antimicrobials.
And septicaemia isn’t the only field where Professor Yin’s work could be useful. Now he knows how they protect cells, NSAIDs could also potentially be repurposed to treat other conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis and neuro-degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s.
“To think about the wide potential applications of these NSAID drugs is very exciting,” Yin said.