In more news you can use before Christmas, here’s another cheap easy way to put the brakes on Covid — this time with the antiseptic Povidone-Iodine (PVP).
While Carrageenan can clog up the virus in the passages behind your nose, it doesn’t necessarily do much to stop the virus replicating in your mouth and throat. But a regular swish or a sniff with Povidone-iodine can reduce the viral load to nothing in a matter of 15 to 30 seconds. Note, you’re supposed to spit it out again, not drink it and make sure to use a very dilute solution.
Saliva can contain as many as 100 million infectious copies of Covid per ml, so the aim here is to reduce the number drastically every four hours. It’ll reduce the risk of you infecting people around you, and probably help buy yourself time to fight back against the virus.
Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator
Between February and August last year et al enrolled 600 people in Bangladesh. Half were asked to use a 1% povidone iodine solution to gargle, use in nasal drops and eye drops. They were asked to do this every 4 hours for 4 weeks, which sounds like a chore, but is nicer than going to hospital. The other half did the same thing but only with lukewarm water. Since nasal rinsing is sometimes claimed to be useful, even the placebo arm may have got some benefit. But the difference was still impressive.
Only 3.3% of the group that used Povidone-Iodine ended up in hospital, while nearly 21% of the plain “water washers” did. Only 2 people died in the treatment group, but 17 people did in the control group.
Randomised controlled trials are useful, but brutal. Perhaps 15 people might not be dead now if they had been randomly assigned to the other group.
The bottom row is the total male plus female.
This is good for everyone except Pharmaceutical companies selling vaccines and treatments.
So the patients those who used 1% PVP I have minimum mortality, morbidity and occupying minimum number of hospital bed causing less burden to health and financial sector of Bangladesh in COVID-19 pandemic situation.
Why can’t Australia do studies like this? Perhaps because we’re rich enough to be a market-worth-capturing?
Chopra et al reviews the situation from a dentists point of view. Dentists are at high risk of catching covid, especially for some procedures, so Dental associations are keen to give patients a mouthwash and rinse before treatment so people don’t infect their dentist.
The CDC recommends preprocedural rinsing with antimicrobial rinses such as chlorhexidine gluconate, essential oils, PVP-I, or cetylpyridinium chloride. PVP-I is safe for use in the oral and nasal cavities at concentrations up to 1.25% [21]. In the absence of any commercially available preparations for routine dental use during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is advised to dilute 10% PVP-I by 1:20 and mix 0.5cc of the diluted PVP-I solution with 9.5cc of sterile saline or sterile water for routine clinical use
Chopra tested four products of PVP-I for a contact time of 30 s for virucidal activity,
a. Antiseptic solution (PVP-I 10%)
b. Skin cleanser (PVP-I 7.5%)
c. Gargle and mouth wash (PVP-I 1%)
d. Throat spray (PVP-I 0.45%)
They concluded: “All products of PVP-I inactivated the virus by ≥99.99% which corresponded to ≥4log10 reduction of virus titre, within 30 s of contact”
So even the half-a-percent solution still killed 9,999 viruses out of 10,000 and with only 30 seconds of swishing. Not bad.
For the record some Doctors Warn Against Using Betadine in Nasal Spray or Mouthwash to Prevent COVID-19. Read it and decide for yourself. Seems to me there is a lot of “nothing to see here” and no good evidence yet type arguments. So where is the call to do the trails?
Obviously, it wouldn’t be good to drink antiseptic and it is possible to overdo it.
Again, the aim with mouthwashes or nasal sprays and eye drops is to whack the viral replication in the early days, and thwart the virus. An antiseptic won’t kill every germ — especially not the ones hiding inside your cells, but it will buy your B and T cells time to figure out the best plan of attack, and stop you infecting everyone around you.
If only the vaccines worked this well?
ht to Vicki, redress, OldOzzie, Dipole, Nabrid Obcsje
And to the C19 site with so many studies.
REFERENCES
Chopra, (2021) Can povidone iodine gargle/mouthrinse inactivate SARS-CoV-2 and decrease the risk of nosocomial and community transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic? An evidence-based update, Japanese Dental Science Review, Volume 57, November 2021, Pages 39-45.
et al., Bioresearch Communications, Volume 7, Issue 1, January 2021 (Peer Reviewed)
Effect of 1% Povidone Iodine Mouthwash/Gargle, Nasal and Eye Drop in COVID-19 patient