Kimchi and Asian fermented foods as candidates for the partial
control of severe COVID-19
Mainstream COVID-19 control strategies including social distancing,
confinement and intensive case finding, testing, tracing and isolating
are so far not enough to provide a SARS-CoV-2-free environment and
restore a safe social life. There are hopes for a safe and effective
vaccine, but this is unlikely to become available. So, there is a need
to explore other potentially useful strategies. An area that has not
been sufficiently considered is diet, both as a preventive and/or
therapeutically useful intervention, encouraging people to eat more
traditional foods containing fermented vegetables. We have suggested
that fermented vegetables could be associated with a lower COVID-19
mortality due to their potent antioxidant effect among which
sulforaphane and LABs are important. However, many other foods may have
a similar activity. It should be noted that dietary supplements that
over-activate Nrf2 may have side-effects.67
Robust evidence from observational studies would be helpful to formally
investigate associations between fermented foods and clinical outcomes
in COVID-19. State-of-the-art methods, including the use of DAGs
(Directed Acyclic Graphs), may be needed to help assess whether the
associations seen are likely to represent causal relationship68. A faster approach would be to develop large
clinical trials in the appropriate populations. Interventions based on
diets with a high intake of fermented foods like Kimchi or other
fermented foods are unlikely to present ethical difficulties.
Furthermore, the fact that a precise mechanism has been proposed would
facilitate adding reliable biomarkers to the relevant clinical outcomes.
Moreover, new drugs based on the components of these fermented foods may
be of interest.
Corresponding author :
Professor Jean Bousquet
CHU Arnaud de Villeneuve, 371 Avenue du Doyen Gaston Giraud, 34295
Montpellier Cedex 5, France Tel +33 611 42 88 47, Fax +33 467 41 67 01