#Scientists test if gargling salt water helps treat coronavirus

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Nikitha Das, a bench scientist at Tango Therapeutics, gargles a solution at her home in Massachusetts.
Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Scientists are testing to see if gargling and flushing out your nose with salty water could be a simple treatment to help fight the coronavirus.

A team at the University of Edinburgh previously discovered that using saline solutions noticeably reduced common colds by two or more days.

They are now starting fresh tests to see if it does the same for COVID-19, and are recruiting volunteers for the trial dubbed COVID-19 ELVIS, for Edinburgh and Lothians Viral Intervention Study.

“As COVID-19 is a new strain of coronavirus we do not know if nasal washout and gargling salty water will have the same effect as previously seen in other strains,” the Scottish team said.

The study hopes to see if it will “reduce the duration of symptoms and transmission to others in the same household.”

The team’s previous study, published last year, suggested that using salt water reduced common colds by an average of two-and-a-half days.

It suggests that certain human cells were able to use chloride ions — a component of sea salt — to create hypochlorous acid, which is the active ingredient in bleach and has antiviral properties.

Researchers want to test people as soon as they fall sick, only requesting people showing any of the key symptoms in the last 48 hours. Only half will use salt water to make comparisons.

They can then do everything from home, just filling out online diaries — and need nothing more than a supply of salt, the study says.

Professor Aziz Sheikh, director of the university’s Usher Institute, said they “hope it will prove to be a useful measure to reduce the impact and spread of the infection.”

“It only requires salt, water and some understanding of procedure so should — if found to be effective — be easy and inexpensive to implement widely,” he said, according to Science Focus.