As lately overly mediatize, chloroquine seems to be a way to make the healing faster. Is it based on a mechanism that stop the acidification (and/or fusion with lysosome) to avoid the escape of the virus from the endosome? If yes, bafilomycin would be also working in that sense?
That is solely for curiosity, no self medication :-)
Thank you
Chloroquine has been shown to be an ionophore for zinc resulting in an increase in cytosolic zinc which inhibits RNA polymerase and therefore reduces viral replication and total viral load. This treatment is not a cure but most likely reduces the amplitude of the cytokine storm that worsens COVID-19.
It is far from being proved that chloroquine cures Covid-19 infection.
As Ron said it prevents or decreases cytokines storm. Howe ver this needs to be proved too.
On the other side chloroquite is not devoid of toxicity at high doses.
Here is an interesting article on an interactome map using the SARSCoV2 proteins as bait and fishing out the human proteins that they prey on. The information was used to identify potential existing drugs and chemicals that may target either the viral proteins or their targets.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.002386v1.full.pdf
Apparently, Bafilomycin is one of the drugs identified which inhibits ATP6AP1, an ATPase inhibitor. This enzyme was "fished" by using the Nsp6 protein of the SARSCoV2.
As far as I understand, the proposed mechanism of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine is by increasing the pH of the lysosome and impairing viral fusion and assembly. If this is true, it would be useful to use during the early phase of infection and as a prophylactic agent. Bafilomycin may enhance this activity. I also raised the question if proton pump inhibitors may also have a similar effect. However, I doubt that chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) would have much effect on the cytokine storm, based on our clinical experience with HCQ on rheumatic diseases. It is not a strong inhibitor of any of the cytokines involved. It would require much heavier guns like IL-6 inhibitors (sarilumab, tocilizumab) to calm a cytokine storm.
I also would like to know if they are trying bafilomycin . And if not, why. There is evidence in the literature to show it can slow progression of infection.
There is still no clear cut data from clinical trials demonstrating any significant difference in Chloroquine treated group compared to standard care. "Partially" is an obsolete term that may be acceptable on the basis of individual anecdotes from the clinicians. The reason to this non significant difference observed in clinical trials could be because SARS-CoV-2 similar to other corona viruses uses both (early and late) routes to enter the cell. The mentioned molecules intervene with late route of entry ( endosomal) but the early route (direct fusion with cell membrane) remains unaffected. Intriguingly, one group has shown that inhibiting late route induces more viral fusion with the cell by early route.