Beaumont Researchers Hope Study Will Help Fight Coronavirus

ROYAL OAK, MI — Researchers at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak have begun enrolling patients in a new clinical study aimed at treating patients who have the coronavirus.

The study, conceived and designed by Dr. Annas Aljassem and Dr. Matthew Sims, is called SINK COVID-19, or the Study of Immunomodulation using Naltrexone and Ketamine for COVID-19. Researchers are hopeful the two common drugs, naltrexone and ketamine, can reduce the severity of the coronavirus and save lives.

“There is an urgent need to develop new treatments for COVID-19 using easily available and affordable medications,” Dr. Sims said. “Ideal new treatments for COVID-19 would help halt the progression of the disease in patients with mild cases prior to the need for ventilators, and provide a rescue treatment for patients with severe cases of the virus.”

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The single center, randomized study is only for patients 18 years and older who are hospitalized at Beaumont, Royal Oak for the treatment of the coronavirus and who meet specific criteria.

The United States Food and Drug Administration's Investigational New Drug program granted Beaumont researchers permission to start the clinical study.

“We need a two-pronged strategy to combat COVID-19. Low doses of naltrexone, a drug approved for treating alcoholism and opiate addiction, as well as ketamine, a drug approved as an anesthetic, may be able to interrupt the inflammation that causes the worst COVID-19 symptoms," Dr. Aljassem said.

Low-dose naltrexone has been used for the treatment of pain and inflammation in multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, fibromyalgia and other pain conditions. Ketamine, an anesthetic drug, shows anti-inflammatory effects at multiple early steps in the inflammatory process.

“The addition of these two medications, as immunomodulators, to the treatment regimen of patients with COVID-19 has potential to decrease the severity of this disease by reducing the autoimmune, hyperinflammatory stages of the virus which is destructive to normal tissue and, when unchecked, rapidly leads to death,” Dr. Sims said.