Researchers have developed gum that can reduce corona infection

The gum contains a high amount of the protein to which the corona virus attaches and traps the virus particles that are in the mouth and saliva of patients.

In doing so it reduces both their penetration into the patient's body cells and their emission into the air

Walla!

health

01/12/2021

Wednesday, 01 December 2021, 06:08 Updated: 06:30

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A recently developed experimental gum may be a surprising tool in the fight against the spread of the corona virus.

According to a study published in the journal Molecular Therapy, the new gum traps viral particles that are found in high amounts in the saliva of corona patients and prevents them from spreading and passing on to others and infecting them with covid-19.

Clinical findings show that the broccoli of people infected with corona has a high presence of the virus.

Therefore, US researchers wanted to focus their research on developing chewing gum that would be able to capture as much of the virus found in saliva and oral cavity as possible, thereby reducing the potential for the virus to spread through droplet spray.

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To the full article

Chewing gum as a step that promotes oral health is not a new idea, past studies have already shown that chewing gums that contain certain components like calcium and bicarbonate can improve oral health and reduce the incidence of tooth decay and harmful bacterial levels in the mouth.

The innovation in the current study is the innovative attempt to produce gum that focuses on capturing a specific virus.

This may be less advisable to do with this gum.

Gif woman blows up gum balloon (Photo: Giphy)

The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes corona disease enters the body's cells by attaching to a protein called ACE2 that is found on the surface of certain cells in our body.

The gum developed by the researchers contains a high amount of ACE2 protein (of plant origin) and their idea was that the proteins in the gum would "capture" the virus particles found in the mouth, thus reducing their chances of being excreted as well as penetrating the carrier's own cells.

To test the effectiveness of the gum they developed, the researchers took saliva samples from corona patients and mixed them with a powdered version of the gum.

They found that exposure to the gum powder caused a significant reduction in virus particles in the infected samples, compared to saliva samples mixed with placebo powder (the same gum powder, only without the ACE2 protein).

In another laboratory experiment, the researchers were able to prove that the gum powder was able to prevent the infection of cells with a pseudo-virus (a harmless version of the corona virus that contains the same spike protein as the original corona virus).

Impressive but preliminary results

According to their findings, even a small amount of the gum - 5 mg, managed to significantly reduce the percentage of virus penetration into the cells. While a larger amount - 50 mg, has already led to the most impressive results of a 95 percent reduction in virus penetration into the cells .

These findings suggest in a well-founded way that the innovative gum can effectively impair the ability of the corona virus to infiltrate and infect human cells.

Just before you start blowing gum balloons into the air at victory celebrations, we will mention that like any scientific study - certainly preliminary - a number of caveats should also be noted regarding this promising study.

First, as mentioned, these are relatively early stages of research, which so far have been performed exclusively in controlled samples and laboratory conditions and not in field conditions and with the participation of human experimenters.

The gum traps the parts of the virus and reduces their release into the air.

Woman with cough mask (Photo: ShutterStock)

There are factors that in reality may affect the effectiveness of the gum and we still have no way of knowing in what way - such as whether the effectiveness will be affected by the temperature in the chewing gum's mouth, or for how long the effectiveness of the gum will be maintained?

The next stages of research will be to test the gum on human experimenters and examine how effective it is in reality versus laboratory conditions.

Another limitation of the study at this stage is the fact that the researchers used samples of partial corona virus, rather than its full version.

Although the technique of using a pseudo-virus in laboratory experiments is familiar and well-established, it will be interesting to see how the gum will work on real samples of the corona virus.

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Will the gum work on Omicron as well?

And as for the question of whether this gum will also be effective against variants like the omicron strain that is spreading around the world these days, scientists say there is good reason for optimism.

Corona viruses of all kinds enter the body's cells in the same way, regardless of the number of mutations they carry on their backs - always by binding to ACE2 proteins.

So theoretically the chewing gum should be just as effective against variants as omicron.

However we can only get a definite answer after the clinical trials of the following steps have been performed.

If all subsequent steps go as planned and the effectiveness of the gum is also proven in real conditions, then its clinical use will probably be to reduce infection (rather than its complete prevention) by verified patients such as in corona wards in hospitals and the like.

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• Bubble gum

• Chewing gum

• Corona

• covid-19

• Omicron variant