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Comment by kian | Hacker News Reader

To any scientists - an anti-malarial is found to be effective against coronavirus. At the same time, initial reports are suggesting that people with type O blood have a reduced risk of infection and lower infection severity than those with other blood types. The same pattern also holds true for malaria, with type O blood having a protective and suppressive effect. If the coronavirus is getting into cells via the ACE2 receptor, why would we expect any of this other stuff to be effective? Why is an anti-parasitic working to reduce viral load? Why is the same blood type protective of both? What common mechanism of action or attack (perhaps hitching a ride on blood cells to spread through the body?) are we missing?

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I am not a scientist, but I have been following the scientists that are studying this. Chloroquine is a zinc ionophore much like the supplement Quercetin [1][2][3]. Both allow zinc to be transported into the cell, preventing or slowing the RNA transcoding process that hijacks your replicator functions. This vastly slows down the replication, allowing your adaptive immune system to get ahead of and destroy the virus faster than it can replicate.

I am not familiar with the observations around type-O blood, but I have been following the discussions on ACE2 and ACE/ACE2 inhibitors (blood pressure meds) which is interesting. The jury is still out on that one, but the theory for ARB's is forcing a binding that blocks nCoV from attaching to the receptor. [4]

[1] - https://examine.com/supplements/quercetin/

[2] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25050823

[3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE4_LsftNKM Chloroquin, Quecertin 6 mins in

[4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vZDVbqRhyM

Given that Chroloquine has been around for a long time and that it is well studied, is there any merit to assume that using it was not a random idea and that it works against some other known RNA viruses?

Apparently the possible utility of chloroquine was discovered because SLE patients on it in China weren't getting Covid-19 during the outbreak [0].

[0]: https://www.jqknews.com/news/388543-The_novel_coronavirus_pn...

It is know to be a zinc ionophore so I would not call it random. That said, it is known to have some side effects. [1] My concern around its use is that it requires a prescription. People won't likely be using this until a doctor prescribes it. By the time a person has gone to a doctor, the virus has likely already replicated quite extensively. Zinc ionophores would be most beneficial if taken very early on after initial infection.

[1] - https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a682318.html

Chloroquine was discovered effective against SARS-coronavirus following the 2003 outbreak.

Based on your research, would you suggest taking Quercetin daily as a supplement?

I don't suggest taking anything to anyone. You should research a supplement and compare its benefits and risks based on your physiology. There probably isn't a one size fits all answer with most phytochemicals. I personally use it to boost the effect of TransResveratrol.

I'm not near being a scientist, but the wikipedia page for Resveratrol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol) lists no health effects, what effects are you taking that for?

Watch this episode of medcram where he explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7F1cnWup9M

Also the most recent french study is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9RqfsmEx55FDum4xY_IlWS...

It's weird, right? I spent some time last night trying to figure out exactly what the mechanism is that chloroquine has when it works. It looks like there may be more than one mechanism in place.

In the malaria parasite, it kills the parasite by hitting up the lysosome (or something intracellular at least - interaction with a protein, can't remember details).

In humans, things get a little bit more fuzzy. It accumulates in lysosomes, and then how it stops Coronaviruses or is effective in lupus treatment isn't very clear. I've seen arguments that it changes pH, or the caspases can't work any more, but that doesn't explain very much.

My bet is that it's screwing with the organisation of the secretory system, which means that virus can't get out properly (maybe budding is broken).

The ABO blood system link is something else altogether, but probably hints towards other functions of blood type in regulating something other than self/other recognition (although virus itself may carry ABO epitope).

> At the same time, initial reports are suggesting that people with type O blood have a reduced risk of infection and lower infection severity than those with other blood types.

[citation appreciated]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v...

Type A: 1.20:1 Type O: 0.67:1

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