Series on COVID Therapy Studies – Resveratrol
With the onslaught by COVID and its coinciding onslaught of self-proclaimed experts with every opinion under the sun, I choose to respond with a series of research study reports so you can choose for yourself. Each edition will bring a few studies describing possible therapies for COVID under investigation or reported in past research. As my recent Facebook Live video noted, we do not know enough about this virus to be definite at this time. I am not claiming any of these are the preventive or curative answer for you or your family’s safety. I just want you to be aware of these studies and have knowledge so that you can grow in wisdom rather than stumble about in panic.
(See appendix paragraph for further thoughts on finding effective COVID therapies)
Our last edition turned out to be a lengthy one for licorice, but this edition on resveratrol will be short and sweet. Only one study was found on Pubmed concerning resveratrol’s efficacy against MERS, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. MERS, also a coronavirus, fizzled out after emerging from Saudi Arabia in 2012. This study by Lin et al used cell cultures and applications of resveratrol to determine any antiviral effects.
The study demonstrated that resveratrol application resulted in decreased viral replication and increased cell survival. Since this was not in humans and comparisons with serum levels after oral administration was not included, we should not hang our hat on this one.
Discernment would lead us elsewhere for COVID prevention or cure. At Sanctuary we occasionally recommend resveratrol for its other metabolic benefits, but we won’t use this for COVID or really any other viral infections. There are better options in helping patients restore healthier, more abundant lives.
Reference:
Lin, Shih-Chao et al. “Effective inhibition of MERS-CoV infection by resveratrol.” BMC infectious diseases vol. 17,1 144. 13 Feb. 2017, doi:10.1186/s12879-017-2253-8
Appendix
One huge challenge in identifying effective therapies for COVID lies in the novelty of it all. Research requires time, something of which we have little in an emerging pandemic. We don’t have the luxury of studying 100 years of research or 10,000 past experiments. This battle requires a great deal of extrapolation. Extrapolation means that we take the little information we do have and attempt to use it in predicting what we don’t know. This process takes place every time an experiment proceeds in science, but the urgency in this case makes it more frustrating than usual. As we walk through a different possible therapy each post, keep this paragraph in mind.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
