{"doi":"10.1016/j.phrs.2023.106702","title":"Beneficial effects of L-Arginine in patients hospitalized for COVID-19: New insights from a randomized clinical trial","abstract":"We have recently demonstrated in a double-blind randomized trial the beneficial effects of L-Arginine in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. We hypothesize that one of the mechanisms underlying the favorable effects of L-Arginine is its action on inflammatory cytokines. To verify our hypothesis, we measured longitudinal plasma levels of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines implied in the pathophysiology of COVID-19 in patients randomized to receive oral L-Arginine or placebo. The study was successfully completed by 169 patients. Patients in the L-Arginine arm had a reduced respiratory support evaluated at 10 and 20 days; moreover, the time to hospital discharge was significantly shorter in the L-Arginine group. The assessment of circulating cytokines revealed that L-Arginine significantly reduced the circulating levels of pro-inflammatory IL-2, IL-6, and IFN-γ and increased the levels of the anti-inflammatory IL-10. Taken together, these findings indicate that adding L-Arginine to standard therapy in COVID-19 patients markedly reduces the need of respiratory support and the duration of in-hospital stay; moreover, L-Arginine significantly regulates circulating levels of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines.","journal":"Pharmacological Research","year":2023,"id":330841,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":34,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9472,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":661576,"name":"Raffaele Izzo","orcid":"0000-0002-0308-2836","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":334315,"name":"Angela Lombardi","orcid":"0000-0001-5421-9970","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":661575,"name":"Antonietta Coppola","orcid":"0000-0002-6596-3065","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":661577,"name":"Giuseppe Fiorentino","orcid":"0000-0002-2523-9769","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":225561,"name":"Gaetano Santulli","orcid":"0000-0001-7231-375X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":238425,"name":"Valentina Trimarco","orcid":"0000-0001-5869-2247","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":47,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:09:14.691473Z","pmid":"36804278","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}