I use a similar nasal spray for allergies (Becodefence). Basically a physical barrier coating the nasal passages. For me and my allergies, it's super effective.
Never thought about using it to block viral infections, but it makes sense: coating the nasal passages with artificial "mucus-like substance" so particles don't reach the membranes. Makes total sense that approach also work for viruses.
A couple of decades ago, I was on a commercial aircraft and sat next to a man who occasionally puffed something into his nostrils. It turned out that he was a researcher at Ft. Detrick, and he explained that keeping your nasal passages moist with saline spray helped to keep out germs. I’ve been using saline sprays ever since!
That, I am afraid, sounds like utter BS. Consider the mechanical action at play here. (If you will delve into gross sticky nose stuff.)
First, nasal mucus is thicker, more viscous than saline spray. It's produced in normal quantities by healthy people, but that production increases when infections or allergies happen, naturally.
By diluting mucus, and making it runny and watery, you're going to defeat its purpose, which is to trap various debris as you inhale, and stop it penetrating further into the nose and body.
So now your mucus defenses are down, yet you've got a little puffer in hand, constantly forcing saline upwards into the nose, more powerfully than simple inhalations. That very upwards and inwards motion is going to force stuff into your body that didn't want to go there, including germs!
It's absolutely counterproductive and sounds like quackery.
Now, if you already detected irritation or allergies based on foreign objects or germs, for example by discolored or thickened mucus, or more than usual, and then you proceed to carefully flush your passages with saline, Neti pot style, allowing it to drain away and out of the nose and sinuses, that would be somewhat effect, but you'd need to be careflu that you're not forcing it inwards. I mean, that is exactly what a runny nose is for during a cold. Don't thwart a runny nose, just clean it away regularly and work with those natural defenses! UGH! (For that matter, don't aggressively attack mild fevers, because fevers are part of an immune response, not the lethal brain-cooking threat we all fear.)
I wonder if this military researcher was consciously aware that he was spreading misinformation to ordinary civilians... hmm
Airplanes bleed external air from the engines into the cabin, which leads to an extremely dry environment. Possibly dry enough to harden and crack mucus. Or perhaps in dry environments the body just decides not to waste water on mucus generation. I have no idea.
In fact, I use NeilMed, a commercial saline & bicarb powder together with distilled water, and I know from past exchanges on HN that lots of others here do, too. My own doctor said it was fine and lots of her patients do it. The solution runs out the other nostril, which is gross so you do it in private.
I have very few colds, allergies, or sinus infections since starting it, although it doesn't eliminate them all.
This Fort Detrick guy, though... that might be misinformation. I use the spray once a day, twice if I have a cold. Definitely not constantly.
Sure, in many applications, such as congestion where you can't breathe, you'd need to break up the mucus and eliminate it, without snarfing it in. Your solution sounds wonderful for doing just that.
I happen to sport a full beard, and I'm rather pleased with zero coronavirus infections in five years, not to mention a low incidence of colds and influenzas. A beard represents a man's unique natural defenses against all enemies, foreign and domestic, of the respiratory and digestive systems. Oiling, cleaning, and combing the beard are integral parts of that defense.
But, simply Use As Directed, because as we've seen with talc, oxygen, and religion, if/when people misuse/overuse them, turns into cancer...
I wonder if there is something like this in the US? As an kidney transplant patient with immunosuppression, I've been super cautious to being in crowds without a mask.
I feel like something like this might give me more reassurance if I'm meeting friends and family at parties and events without a mask.
That was my first thought, sounds uncomfortable. Hopefully you'd just get used it though and to be fair, it's definitely less uncomfortable than dying from preventable diseases.
Yeah; my doctor recommends neilmed sinus rinse, in the little squirt bottle and powder packet form factor. I keep a gallon of distilled water in the bathroom. Problem solved. (Avoid the maximum strength formulation unless you want to use osmotic pressure to reduce swelling — ouch!)
If you go for the carbonated mist spray stuff, note that you get a lot less volume of water per dose, so it’s a bit less reliable (but much more convenient since you don’t need to worry about sterilizing anything).
Regarding the article: Unless you’re using this when completely symptom free (or have some condition where your sinuses are chronically dry), there’s probably already more crap in your sinuses than you need. I’m skeptical of this new technology.
I will admit to following the swab-nose-with-neosporin protocol following a previous mouse study with similar results. I use this during travel and have had no short terms ill effects and caught no infections while following it. (Not a doctor, not well controlled, just a random internet guy).
I'm busy so I didn't read the paper - is there a reason to use neosporin instead of petroleum jelly? In addition to your concern, many people are actively allergic to the ingredients in neosporin.
Probably best not to do that. Neosporin is somewhat infamous for causing allergic reactions and repeated use increases the chances of getting an allergy to it.
> To assess the translational potential of the intranasal neomycin approach in humans, we conducted a small pilot randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study involving healthy human participants.
> For the experimental arm (n = 12)
> For the placebo arm (n = 7)
> One out of 21 participants experienced signs of an adverse event after 2 doses which self-resolved after a few days and self-withdrew from the study early. Upon examination of their medical record, it was found that the participant had a history of allergic reactions to various medications (not specific to study drug). Another participant’s nasal samples could not be used due to technical issues. All other 19 participants tolerated the treatment well and did not experience any adverse events from the study.
When I read about something like this, my first thought is always, is this something we could have evolved ourselves? And if so, what haven’t we? Thicker mucus seems like something we have evolved, so was there some survival trade-off, perhaps in terms of general quality of respiration, that meant we didn’t?
I forgot what scientist said this but “survival of the fittest” is a misnomer and it’s more about straight up surviving. You need to have tolerable constant pressure for evolutionary traits to propagate. Also, its very possible we already developed thicker mucus than our ancestors millenniums ago.
It is not so long ago since we are exposed to so many different viruses. I think way to less time for evolution to be effective.
Our ancestors a few thousand years ago still lived in largely isolated, at least not as extremely mobile and transcontinental communities as we do. And in terms of the number of generations, that is so few that we can say we are at the very beginning of an evolutionary development .
61 million years ago, a branch of the mammalian family tree had a gene break, called GLO. Since then, those mammals have been unable to synthesize Vitamin C. That branch includes humans.
There's no upside to this. Vitamin C is crucial, it isn't especially easy to get sometimes, and it would most definitely improve survival. We just... can't make it. That's all.
I remember reading a while back that your eye is actually a big vector for getting viruses. We all touch surfaces and then touch our face and eyes a lot more than we realise.
Such spray [0] has been on the market by multiple brands and is backed by studies [1]. It has a throat spray and lozenges, too. There are some other patented variants with a different type of carrageenan.
The article doesn't say how the spray affects the sense of smell, which I'd guess it diminishes or blocks. We evolved that sense for good survival reasons.
In mice, and also using a printed replica of a nasal cavity. It will be a while before we even see human tests, and I'm sort of curious how humans will respond to feeling their noses filled with a gel...
I do a povodone/saline nasal spray rinse when flying. Then use my navage to clear out my sinuses when I arrive at my destination. Can't tell you if it works, but I historically have gotten sick when I travel and I've noticed a reduction in getting sick since I started this protocol.
As is often the case, I'm unsure why you're d'voted.
There's a patented nasal product containing a modified carrageenan which has had substantially beneficial results in many subjects. When coupled with various (non-prescription/natural) anti-xyz ingredients, it can be really effective.
I've been making my own nasal formula for over 8 years, which I discovered 7 years ago has been patented by one of the big pharmas. It works.
There's a lot of potential here, and algae is definitely on the list.
If I'm not mistaken, Betadine had a version that used something else with the carrageenan, but it was removed from the US market and I don't remember the ingredients.
As for my version, the HN environment is a bit too vicious to discuss my personal health methods. I've not been in the mood for phatic intellectual combat for a while now.
The article is useless because it says nothing about what the active ingredients are. The corresponding reference is also equally useless since it's paywalled. Nothing to see here.
I think I found the preprint of the article. Of course, the final published article has gone through some further editing. Anyway:
> To ensure safety during daily or repeated use, PCANS was meticulously designed as a “drug-free” formulation, incorporating biopolymers, surfactants, and alcohols that are listed in the inactive ingredient database (IID) or generally recognized as safe (GRAS) list of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and are present as excipients in commercially available nasal/topical formulations. These components and their unique concentrations were identified via a highly iterative approach aimed at maximizing sprayability, mucoadhesiveness, the capture of respiratory droplets, physical barrier property, pathogen neutralization activity, and nasal residence time.
> To prepare PCANS, gellan and pectin solutions were mixed in a ratio of 1:1, followed by the addition of tween-80 (Sigma Aldrich). The solution was then supplemented with benzalkonium chloride (BKC) (Sigma Aldrich) and subjected to immediate mixing by pipetting up and down several times. Finally, phenethyl alcohol (Sigma Aldrich) was added, and the pH of the solution was adjusted to 5.5.
They seem to already have a commercial product named "Profi" with these ingredients, although the fact that it hasn't been tested in humans makes me trust it less.
In this context, “drug-free” should probably be read as “they got permission to skip clinical trials, drug manufacturing oversight, Drug Facts labeling laws, and so on”.
The article doesn't even say how long the protection lasts for, or mention a single one of the ingredients by name. Doesn't really give the reader much to go on :-/
While cool, studies like this always remind me that we deliberately breed and infect animals to see if they suffer and die from the disease or the cure.
No need to remind me that without this we wouldn’t have all our medical advancements, it’s just a sad footnote to all of modern medicine, that’s all.
81 comments:
I use a similar nasal spray for allergies (Becodefence). Basically a physical barrier coating the nasal passages. For me and my allergies, it's super effective.
Never thought about using it to block viral infections, but it makes sense: coating the nasal passages with artificial "mucus-like substance" so particles don't reach the membranes. Makes total sense that approach also work for viruses.
A couple of decades ago, I was on a commercial aircraft and sat next to a man who occasionally puffed something into his nostrils. It turned out that he was a researcher at Ft. Detrick, and he explained that keeping your nasal passages moist with saline spray helped to keep out germs. I’ve been using saline sprays ever since!
That’s one of the leading explanations for why flu outbreaks are seasonal. Years ago I was rather surprised to realize that we kinda just don’t know.
That, I am afraid, sounds like utter BS. Consider the mechanical action at play here. (If you will delve into gross sticky nose stuff.)
First, nasal mucus is thicker, more viscous than saline spray. It's produced in normal quantities by healthy people, but that production increases when infections or allergies happen, naturally.
By diluting mucus, and making it runny and watery, you're going to defeat its purpose, which is to trap various debris as you inhale, and stop it penetrating further into the nose and body.
So now your mucus defenses are down, yet you've got a little puffer in hand, constantly forcing saline upwards into the nose, more powerfully than simple inhalations. That very upwards and inwards motion is going to force stuff into your body that didn't want to go there, including germs!
It's absolutely counterproductive and sounds like quackery.
Now, if you already detected irritation or allergies based on foreign objects or germs, for example by discolored or thickened mucus, or more than usual, and then you proceed to carefully flush your passages with saline, Neti pot style, allowing it to drain away and out of the nose and sinuses, that would be somewhat effect, but you'd need to be careflu that you're not forcing it inwards. I mean, that is exactly what a runny nose is for during a cold. Don't thwart a runny nose, just clean it away regularly and work with those natural defenses! UGH! (For that matter, don't aggressively attack mild fevers, because fevers are part of an immune response, not the lethal brain-cooking threat we all fear.)
I wonder if this military researcher was consciously aware that he was spreading misinformation to ordinary civilians... hmm
Airplanes bleed external air from the engines into the cabin, which leads to an extremely dry environment. Possibly dry enough to harden and crack mucus. Or perhaps in dry environments the body just decides not to waste water on mucus generation. I have no idea.
This sounds science-y.
In fact, I use NeilMed, a commercial saline & bicarb powder together with distilled water, and I know from past exchanges on HN that lots of others here do, too. My own doctor said it was fine and lots of her patients do it. The solution runs out the other nostril, which is gross so you do it in private.
I have very few colds, allergies, or sinus infections since starting it, although it doesn't eliminate them all.
This Fort Detrick guy, though... that might be misinformation. I use the spray once a day, twice if I have a cold. Definitely not constantly.
> The solution runs out the other nostril
Exactly the key for this treatment, indeed.
Sure, in many applications, such as congestion where you can't breathe, you'd need to break up the mucus and eliminate it, without snarfing it in. Your solution sounds wonderful for doing just that.
I happen to sport a full beard, and I'm rather pleased with zero coronavirus infections in five years, not to mention a low incidence of colds and influenzas. A beard represents a man's unique natural defenses against all enemies, foreign and domestic, of the respiratory and digestive systems. Oiling, cleaning, and combing the beard are integral parts of that defense.
But, simply Use As Directed, because as we've seen with talc, oxygen, and religion, if/when people misuse/overuse them, turns into cancer...
I should have mentioned that sometimes afterwards, some solution drips out of your nose when you incline your head forward. Super-embarrassing.
I wonder if there is something like this in the US? As an kidney transplant patient with immunosuppression, I've been super cautious to being in crowds without a mask.
I feel like something like this might give me more reassurance if I'm meeting friends and family at parties and events without a mask.
Beclometasone nasal spray is what you're looking for. It's sort of expensive ... looks like $250-$350 per package.
Does it affect the sense of smell?
And, an artificial mucus makes me wonder if one feels as if they constantly need to blow their nose?
Still, neat.
That was my first thought, sounds uncomfortable. Hopefully you'd just get used it though and to be fair, it's definitely less uncomfortable than dying from preventable diseases.
Interesting! What are the sensations / side effects?
Vitamin D daily may provide protection from viruses and skin cancers. https://scitechdaily.com/study-finds-vitamin-d3-important-fo...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36580363/
Or .. you could use salt spray .. the kind of designed for kids. Its just salt and water.
I stopped using other kinds of spray since discovering that it fixes my sinus infections in a matter of a day or two.
Yeah; my doctor recommends neilmed sinus rinse, in the little squirt bottle and powder packet form factor. I keep a gallon of distilled water in the bathroom. Problem solved. (Avoid the maximum strength formulation unless you want to use osmotic pressure to reduce swelling — ouch!)
If you go for the carbonated mist spray stuff, note that you get a lot less volume of water per dose, so it’s a bit less reliable (but much more convenient since you don’t need to worry about sterilizing anything).
Regarding the article: Unless you’re using this when completely symptom free (or have some condition where your sinuses are chronically dry), there’s probably already more crap in your sinuses than you need. I’m skeptical of this new technology.
On the other hand, don't think you can get away without the salt packet either. I think that's worse than too much salt.
Any information about nettie pot vs the squirt bottle you use?
Gravity vs. active pressure.
That's it exactly for me. Squirt bottle seems more effective than Neti pot, just because there's some force in the water.
You DO need the powder, though; otherwise the water burns like hell.
I will admit to following the swab-nose-with-neosporin protocol following a previous mouse study with similar results. I use this during travel and have had no short terms ill effects and caught no infections while following it. (Not a doctor, not well controlled, just a random internet guy).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/coronavirus/publicatio...
That also sounds like a recipe for inducing antibiotic resistance in the staph in your nose.
I'm busy so I didn't read the paper - is there a reason to use neosporin instead of petroleum jelly? In addition to your concern, many people are actively allergic to the ingredients in neosporin.
yes, really, don't do it. it's a danger not only to yourself, but to others as well.
You think putting neosporin in your nose a few times will get someone infected with antibiotic resistant staph?
I wouldn’t do that. All sorts of stuff will permanently kill your sense of smell.
One common one (this keeps getting reinvented, then banned in the us) is zinc nasal spray.
Zinc lozenges seem fine. Both are effective at shortening colds.
Only if it's zinc acetate, which is rare!
Probably best not to do that. Neosporin is somewhat infamous for causing allergic reactions and repeated use increases the chances of getting an allergy to it.
From the study, to your point:
> To assess the translational potential of the intranasal neomycin approach in humans, we conducted a small pilot randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study involving healthy human participants.
> For the experimental arm (n = 12) > For the placebo arm (n = 7)
> One out of 21 participants experienced signs of an adverse event after 2 doses which self-resolved after a few days and self-withdrew from the study early. Upon examination of their medical record, it was found that the participant had a history of allergic reactions to various medications (not specific to study drug). Another participant’s nasal samples could not be used due to technical issues. All other 19 participants tolerated the treatment well and did not experience any adverse events from the study.
This is a good point! I've got a few decades of tolerating neosporin for normal uses so wasn't overly concerned.
Why not use an N95 mask? I use it on movie theaters, subways and airplanes.
Yes, mask first, this is a second line of defense. (Again, maybe, could do nothing or be harmful)
Mice != Humans
When I read about something like this, my first thought is always, is this something we could have evolved ourselves? And if so, what haven’t we? Thicker mucus seems like something we have evolved, so was there some survival trade-off, perhaps in terms of general quality of respiration, that meant we didn’t?
I forgot what scientist said this but “survival of the fittest” is a misnomer and it’s more about straight up surviving. You need to have tolerable constant pressure for evolutionary traits to propagate. Also, its very possible we already developed thicker mucus than our ancestors millenniums ago.
It is not so long ago since we are exposed to so many different viruses. I think way to less time for evolution to be effective.
Our ancestors a few thousand years ago still lived in largely isolated, at least not as extremely mobile and transcontinental communities as we do. And in terms of the number of generations, that is so few that we can say we are at the very beginning of an evolutionary development .
Evolution isn't nearly as perfect as you think it may be.
For an example, check your feet.
I’m looking at them, they’re nice.. be more specific?
Routing the plantar nerve around a bunch of ligaments that swell with use seems like a pretty horrible idea, for one!
Yeah, our legs and feet provide a pretty sweet and effective kinetic chain. What's not to love.
They start to hurt around year fifty.
Hard to blame evolution for that given that reproduction is much rarer after age 50.
I can imagine this (and thicker mucus in general) negatively affecting olfaction, which is pretty important for survival.
61 million years ago, a branch of the mammalian family tree had a gene break, called GLO. Since then, those mammals have been unable to synthesize Vitamin C. That branch includes humans.
There's no upside to this. Vitamin C is crucial, it isn't especially easy to get sometimes, and it would most definitely improve survival. We just... can't make it. That's all.
"There's no upside to this."
Of course there is an upside to this.
We may not value that upside and we may not ever learn what it is but ALL traits have both benefits and costs.
We have lots of defenses. Unfortunately viruses evolve a lot faster than we do.
And our immune systems evolved before we had airplanes.
I remember reading a while back that your eye is actually a big vector for getting viruses. We all touch surfaces and then touch our face and eyes a lot more than we realise.
This reminds me of this absolutely fantastic podcast episode by Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MzzD2F73iGU
Such spray [0] has been on the market by multiple brands and is backed by studies [1]. It has a throat spray and lozenges, too. There are some other patented variants with a different type of carrageenan.
[0]: https://www.carragelose.com/
[1]: https://www.carragelose.com/en/publications
If pure saline solution is too watery, couldn't I just add hyaluronic acid to make it more viscous?
The article doesn't say how the spray affects the sense of smell, which I'd guess it diminishes or blocks. We evolved that sense for good survival reasons.
Shields up: "PCANS forms a gel, increasing its mechanical strength by a hundred times, forming a solid barrier"
I wonder if it feels unpleasant
I love the elegance of a simple solution like this to solve seemingly much more sophisticated problems.
This is very good engineering imo.
Modeled on (and improved) the booger!
COVID is airborne, it doesn’t spread via droplets. It’s not clear whether this spray can also block airborne viruses or it only works on droplets.
https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/indoor-air-and-co...
So, internal disinfectant. Who'd have thought.
In mice, and also using a printed replica of a nasal cavity. It will be a while before we even see human tests, and I'm sort of curious how humans will respond to feeling their noses filled with a gel...
I do a povodone/saline nasal spray rinse when flying. Then use my navage to clear out my sinuses when I arrive at my destination. Can't tell you if it works, but I historically have gotten sick when I travel and I've noticed a reduction in getting sick since I started this protocol.
I am using iovir it has some read algae in supposedly does kind of the same thing
As is often the case, I'm unsure why you're d'voted.
There's a patented nasal product containing a modified carrageenan which has had substantially beneficial results in many subjects. When coupled with various (non-prescription/natural) anti-xyz ingredients, it can be really effective.
I've been making my own nasal formula for over 8 years, which I discovered 7 years ago has been patented by one of the big pharmas. It works.
There's a lot of potential here, and algae is definitely on the list.
Care to share the details?
Not sure exactly what you're looking for, but a cursory search on the carrageenan nasal spray found this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8493111/
If I'm not mistaken, Betadine had a version that used something else with the carrageenan, but it was removed from the US market and I don't remember the ingredients.
As for my version, the HN environment is a bit too vicious to discuss my personal health methods. I've not been in the mood for phatic intellectual combat for a while now.
The article is useless because it says nothing about what the active ingredients are. The corresponding reference is also equally useless since it's paywalled. Nothing to see here.
I think I found the preprint of the article. Of course, the final published article has gone through some further editing. Anyway:
> To ensure safety during daily or repeated use, PCANS was meticulously designed as a “drug-free” formulation, incorporating biopolymers, surfactants, and alcohols that are listed in the inactive ingredient database (IID) or generally recognized as safe (GRAS) list of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and are present as excipients in commercially available nasal/topical formulations. These components and their unique concentrations were identified via a highly iterative approach aimed at maximizing sprayability, mucoadhesiveness, the capture of respiratory droplets, physical barrier property, pathogen neutralization activity, and nasal residence time.
> To prepare PCANS, gellan and pectin solutions were mixed in a ratio of 1:1, followed by the addition of tween-80 (Sigma Aldrich). The solution was then supplemented with benzalkonium chloride (BKC) (Sigma Aldrich) and subjected to immediate mixing by pipetting up and down several times. Finally, phenethyl alcohol (Sigma Aldrich) was added, and the pH of the solution was adjusted to 5.5.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.02.560602v1....
They seem to already have a commercial product named "Profi" with these ingredients, although the fact that it hasn't been tested in humans makes me trust it less.
You forgot the /s. Or at least I deeply hope you forgot the /s.
When I saw "drug-free" the first thing that jumped to mind was a placebo. Which would not have shocked me.
> When I saw "drug-free" the first thing that jumped to mind was a placebo. Which would not have shocked me
Because people dying of covid are just “imagining it”?
I hope you don't think that covid is imaginary.
The article explains well enough that "drug free" doesn't mean inactive. So it's more a matter of what a "drug" consists of.
In this context, “drug-free” should probably be read as “they got permission to skip clinical trials, drug manufacturing oversight, Drug Facts labeling laws, and so on”.
Ah, then maybe "placebo" wasn't such a bad guess after all.
> PCANS nasal spray could effectively block infection from an influenza virus (PR8) at 25 times the lethal dose
A certain amount of influenza virus acts as a toxin and just kills you?
The paper says that 100% of the control group died. (This is a mouse model and a virus specifically selected to be deadly.)
So, not "toxic", and not the usual LD50 that's often misreported as "lethal". But still, the language seems appropriate.
> They have not studied PCANS directly in humans
Stopped reading there. As promising as it sounds, I'll be a lot more interested when this is a product that's proven to work.
(Joke) Wake me when the human studies are done
The article doesn't even say how long the protection lasts for, or mention a single one of the ingredients by name. Doesn't really give the reader much to go on :-/
Abstract says PCANS suppresses pathological manifestations and offers protection for at least 4 hours.. I'd like to read the full paper. Anyone?
Doesn't seem like its proven to work, but looks like it can be purchased, called "Profi Nasal Spray".
While cool, studies like this always remind me that we deliberately breed and infect animals to see if they suffer and die from the disease or the cure.
No need to remind me that without this we wouldn’t have all our medical advancements, it’s just a sad footnote to all of modern medicine, that’s all.