Perhaps of use to people getting respiratory infections
A fingerful of Neosporin antibiotic swabbed inside your nose might help you fight off a range of invading respiratory viruses, a new study claims.
Lab animals whose noses were treated using neomycin – the main ingredient in over-the-counter Neosporin ointment – mounted a robust immune defense against both the COVID virus and a highly virulent strain of influenza, researchers found.
The same nasal approach also appeared to work in humans, this time with Neosporin itself.
The ointment triggered a swift immune response from genes in the human nose that serve as a first line of defense against invading viruses, researchers reported April 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
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
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like any of their human subjects, including the control group, got sick during the study, so they could only test responses of the markers.
Seems like it’d be a bit much to do this every day, twice per day for prevention. It might be worth doing for short periods such as a large meeting or conference when you can reasonably expect to be exposed a lot, or while traveling.
Neomycin is also a common allergen that causes severe contact dermatitis. Chronic use could lead to sensitization and you wouldn’t want to have type IV hypersensitivity reactions occur intranasally.
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“We decided to see if neomycin applied into the nose can protect animals from infection with COVID as well as the flu,” Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, the lead author of the study and a professor of immunobiology at the Yale University School of Medicine, told Salon in a phone interview. “And what we found is that treatment with neomycin significantly prevented infection and also reduced disease burden in animals.”
Good point, this is a super interesting idea, but every time I use Neosporin, the contact dermatitis or allergic reaction I have is always far worse than whatever I was taking it to treat. I wonder if I’d have the same reaction in my nose?
and two of my docs blessed it ads being at least harmless.