PHARMA NEWS

Drugs similar to Aspirin, Ibuprofen could help treat sepsis, study suggests

A potentially life-saving treatment for sepsis has been under our noses for decades in the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) most people have in their medicine cabinets, a new University of Colorado Boulder study suggests. Each year more than 1 million people in the United States contract sepsis, an overwhelming immune response to infection. It kills as many as half of those who contract it, sometimes within days, according to the National Institutes of Health. As the number of cases rises, particularly in intensive care units, pharmaceutical companies have been scrambling to develop a drug to combat the condition.

"NSAIDS like ibuprofen and aspirin are among the most prevalent pharmaceuticals worldwide, with over 30 billion doses taken annually in the United States alone. But their precise mechanisms of action are not entirely understood," said Hang Hubert Yin, a biochemistry professor at CU Boulder's BioFrontiers Institute and lead author of the new paper, published today in Cell Chemical Biology. "We provide the first evidence for a novel mechanism of action for NSAIDS, one we believe could have a direct impact on people's lives."

Researchers have long known that NSAIDs work in part by inhibiting an enzyme called cyclooxygenase (COX). They've also known that these NSAIDs can come with serious side effects. Some NSAIDs have been removed from the market after showing they boosted risk of heart attack and stroke.