Recent research shows that clot-dissolving natural Japanese food, Natto, has potential as a Covid treatment.
While trying to find a way to naturally dissolve clots and improve circulation, Dr. Hiroyuki Sumi discovered that the fermented food Natto, contained a protein-based enzyme — which he named “Nattokinase”— that easily .dissolved fibrin, the mesh-like material the body produces to clot blood.
Natto is made by fermenting soybeans with Bacillus subtilis, a bacteria found in the human gut and soil.
But the latest research shows it may inhibit the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect cells and cause COVID-19.
According to paper author Tetsuya Mizutani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Prevention Research at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, “Traditionally, Japanese people have assumed that natto is beneficial for their health. In recent years, research studies have revealed scientific evidence for this belief. In this study, we investigated natto’s antiviral effects on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and bovine herpesvirus 1 (BHV-1), which causes respiratory disease in cattle.”
Both SARS-CoV-2 and BHV-1 lost the ability to infect cells when treated with the unheated natto extract. Neither virus appeared to be affected by the heat-treated natto extract.
A protease or proteases — proteins that metabolize other proteins in the natto extract, directly digests the receptor-binding domain on the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2, and this could be the reason behind its antiviral activity, according to Mizutani. However, the protease appears to break down in heat, losing the ability to digest proteins and letting the virus remain infectious.