Mini ReviewAbstract
Corona virus also called SARS-COV-2 showed highly pathogenic, caused severe or even life-threatening diseases, and still transmitted from person-to-person. Given fast evolution of the COVID-19 outbreak, world health organization declared its outbreak as pandemic. Until now, no drugs or biologics have been proven to be effective for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19. Mainstream medicine has little in its arsenal for viral diseases. Some promising agents are selectively RNA inhibitors, an antimalarial agent, an HIV protease inhibitor and an influenza viral neuraminidase inhibitor, which showed good clinical efficacy in treating COVID-19.
Keywords: RNA virus; Coronavirus; COVID-19; World Pandemic
Mini Review
Corona virus are enveloped, positive-stranded RNA viruses with nucleo capsid [1,2]. So far it appears that COVID-19 predominantly affects the lower respiratory tract leading to break down of the lung cells, with infiltration of fluid, hemorrhage, and inflammatory cells into the alveolar space that manifest the disease further [2- 4]. As a result of inflammatory/repair process, these areas develop pneumonia [5]. Corona viruses uses angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) to target cells on the epithelium of the lungs, intestine, and blood vessels [4,6,7]. Many viruses require surface proteins for cell fusion and entry [6,8]. Coronavirus has three major proteins, named, spike (S) protein, envelope (E) protein, nucleo capsid protein (N) and membrane (M) protein [1,2,6,7]. The N is a structural protein that binds to the coronavirus RNA genome, thus creating a shell around the nucleic materials [2,6,7]. The S protein is responsible for host infection by facilitating the attachment and enables viral entry into the host cell [2,7,8]. ACE2 is an endogenous membrane protein that facilitates COVID-19 infection (Figure 1) [6,8]. There is currently no vaccine or treatment for corona virus disease [9,10]. The pandemic of corona virus disease has accelerated the race for development of vaccines and other therapeutic options [9,10]. Chloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria and arthritis, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to be tested as a treatment for coronavirus [10]. Chloroquine is being tested in various clinical trials, while other antivirals drugs are also planned to be fast-tracked for testing for corona virus such as Favilavir and others as mentioned in Table 1 [2,9-13]. There is no specific medicine to prevent or treat corona virus disease. Listed drugs in table one may be used as supportive care to help the patients.
Figure 1: Illustration of COVID-19 VIRUS.
Table 1: Here is a list of the major corona virus drugs that have the potential to become major corona virus vaccines or antivirals for treating the corona virus infection.
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Authors ‘contributions
MU: Conceptualization and writing of review manuscript.
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The article and the sources used have been cited in the article.
Competing interests
The author declares that he has no competing interests.
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