Ibuprofen And COVID-19 Infection

Hey guys, it’s Dr. Z. Okay, there’s been a lot of news recently about ibuprofen, Advil, Motrin, and those kind of drugs, being dangerous during COVID-19 outbreak. In other words, could it put you at greater risk for getting the disease or being sicker from the disease or dying from the disease? And here’s the bottom line, because the health minister of France came out saying, don’t use this drug, which made everyone go, huh?

And it’s based on some anecdotal experience but also maybe a piece in The Lancet where they were talking about the receptors that allow the virus to enter cells in the lung, these ACE2 receptors. And there’s some theorizing that ibuprofen might cause an increase in those numbers of receptors. Now, here is the bottom line. When you talk to actual experts who study this virus and actually identify how it binds and so on, they say this has really not been established at all, so there’s not good evidence that it puts you at greater risk. There’s not even great evidence that it really makes these receptors more robust, and there’s not good evidence that even if the receptors were more numerous that it makes you sicker from the disease.

So, here’s why you shouldn’t take ibuprofen, because ibuprofen is not as good at reducing fevers safely as Tylenol or paracetamol if you’re nasty and in another country. Tylenol is the preferred drug for lowering fevers. There’s another reason you wouldn’t want to use ibuprofen in general in a case like this, and that is that people in these situations can suffer organ damage from the virus, from the effects of the virus, and one of those organs is the kidney. Well it turns out ibuprofen can actually put your kidneys at risk anyways. That’s another reason it isn’t our first go-to drug, all right?

The third thing is if you have cardiac problems, ibuprofen can actually increase a little bit the risk of cardiac problems. So, for those reasons it’s not our go-to drug in the hospital. Now, if you are on chronic ibuprofen prescribed by a doctor or you use it occasionally, I don’t think that’s a problem, right? But making a blanket statement, don’t use ibuprofen in COVID-19, I think is probably incorrect based on the science we have so far. Now, the WHO, there’s been this myth that WHO is saying don’t use it, but they’re not saying that. They’re saying our go-to drug is Tylenol. We’re looking into these reports of whether ibuprofen isn’t safe. But they have not established that it isn’t. All right guys, I hope that’s helpful. Share this video. Thanks to all our Supporters on Facebook and YouTube for making these things possible, and stay safe out there. Peace.