Neosporin applied to the nose offers protection from viruses (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 years ago by TheModerateTankie@hexbear.net to c/covid@hexbear.net

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In a nutshell, we showed that over-the-counter cheap generic antibiotic neomycin can be repurposed in nasal formulation to prevent & treat infection, block transmission, and reduce disease burden against a wide array of viruses. Since this is a host-directed strategy and virus-agnostic, it holds promise as a prophylactic strategy against any viral threat.

The advice in the screencapped thread was to apply a little with a q-tip to the inside of the nostrils.

There is no info on any dangers of doing this very often, but if you can't avoid a high-risk environment it's worth trying.

Here's a thread about the study. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1782535781338222960.html

here's the study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5918160/

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[-] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 26 points 2 years ago

I am not anything, but a doc during am outdoor first aid cert course insisted that the real benefit of Neosporin was that it was petroleum jelly and it created a hydrophobic/biologically inert barrier over cleaned/irrigated membranes and wounds (blocking vectors of infection), and that every bug was already resistant to its antibiotic mix and had been for decades.

I did take a bunch of biology and microbio and he made a very convincing case for using petroleum jelly on nicks, cuts, etc.

but I am, again, not any sort of human health professional.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 15 points 2 years ago

There's an old folk remedy that putting petroleum jelly around your nostrils helps hayfever, by absorbing pollen, I imagine that could be what's happening here.

[-] Darthsenio_Mall@hexbear.net 24 points 2 years ago

petroleum jelly around your nostrils helps hayfever, by absorbing pollen

you have nothing to lose but your grains marx

[-] DyingOfDeBordom@hexbear.net 10 points 2 years ago

This isn't saying the antibiotic prevents covid it's saying it stimulates an anti viral response in the nose, thats separate from it being an antibiotic so resistance doesn't matter

[-] Rx_Hawk@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago

Yeah, this is what I was thinking

[-] dat_math@hexbear.net 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

frankly, it's amazing to me that the mouse HSV challenge study didn't run a trial with petroleum jelly only

[-] dat_math@hexbear.net 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

After some further reading: doing that control would have been better science, but it seems the mouse sars-cov2 and influenza challenge studies' results indicate that might not be necessary except to rule out the role of petroleum jelly itself:

In this study, we found that intranasal delivery of neomycin, a generic aminoglycoside antibiotic, induces the expression of interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) in the nasal mucosa that is independent of the commensal microbiota. Prophylactic or therapeutic administration of neomycin provided significant protection against upper respiratory infection and lethal disease in a mouse model of COVID-19. Furthermore, neomycin treatment protected Mx1 congenic mice from upper and lower respiratory infections with a highly virulent strain of influenza A virus. In Syrian hamsters, neomycin treatment potently mitigated contact transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In healthy humans, intranasal application of neomycin-containing Neosporin ointment was well tolerated and effective at inducing ISG expression in the nose in a subset of participants. These findings suggest that neomycin has the potential to be harnessed as a host-directed antiviral strategy for the prevention and treatment of respiratory viral infections.