Emerging Pharmacotherapies for COVID-19
Evi Sovia

Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani

Abstract

Corona-virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic conditions have presented challenges for health professionals to determine the appropriate pharmacological therapy in a limited time. Currently, no specific treatment is available against the new virus SARS-CoV-2. Hence, the search for effective therapeutic agents to tackle COVID-19 is vital and urgent. It is cost-effective to study the current antiviral and other drugs against SARS-CoV-2 in view of the time and cost needed to come up with new therapies. The repurposing of available drugs for the management of many disease conditions has become an increasingly common technique in recent times. Based on the pathogenesis of COVID-19, pharmacological treatments for COVID-19 can be divided into two step. Early in the process of infection, SARS-CoV-2 replication is the main driver of the disease. Later in the process of infection, an exaggerated immune/inflammatory response to the virus that leads to damage to tissues is driven by the disease. Based on this understanding, it is expected that antiviral therapies will have the greatest effect early in the course of illness, whereas in the later phases of COVID-19, immunosuppressive treatments are likely to be more effective. The present review will focus on the repurposing efficacy of the currently used drugs against COVID-19. Number of antiviral drugs such as remdesivir, favipiravir, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, lopinavir, ritonavir have shown inhibitory effects against the SARS-CoV2 in-vitro as well as in clinical conditions. The immune based therapy like corticosteroids, tocilizumab, baricitinib, casirivimab, and bamlanvimab have shown some promise in more severe cases.

Keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, antiviral, immune based therapy

Topic: Biomedical Science