We are facing an unprecedented global health crisis caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). At this date more than 680 thousand people have died due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Unfortunately, until now no effective treatment to combat the virus and vaccine are available. We performed experiments to test if hypertonic saline solution is able to inhibit virus replication in vitro. Our data shows that 260 mM NaCl (1.5%) inhibits 100% SARS-CoV-2 replication in Vero cells. Furthermore, our results suggest that the virus replication inhibition is due to an intracellular mechanism and not due to the dissociation between spike SARS-CoV-2 protein and its human receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 interaction. NaCl depolarizes the plasma membrane supposedly associated with the inhibition of the SARS-CoV-2 life cycle. This observation could lead to simple, safe and low cost interventions at various stages of COVID-19 treatment, improving the prognosis of infected patients, thereby mitigating the social and economic costs of the pandemic.

中文翻译：

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高渗盐溶液体外抑制SARS-CoV-2

我们正面临由严重急性呼吸系统综合症冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）引起的前所未有的全球健康危机。到目前为止，2019年有68万多人死于冠状病毒病（COVID-19）。不幸的是，到目前为止，还没有有效的方法来对抗病毒和疫苗。我们进行了实验，以测试高渗盐水溶液是否能够在体外抑制病毒复制。我们的数据表明，260 mM NaCl（1.5％）抑制了Vero细胞中100％的SARS-CoV-2复制。此外，我们的结果表明，病毒复制抑制是由于细胞内机制引起的，而不是由于尖峰SARS-CoV-2蛋白与其人类受体血管紧张素转换酶2相互作用之间的解离。NaCl使质膜去极化，这可能与SARS-CoV-2生命周期的抑制有关。该观察结果可能导致在COVID-19治疗的各个阶段进行简单，安全和低成本的干预，从而改善了感染患者的预后，从而减轻了大流行的社会和经济成本。