Systems analysis shows that thermodynamic physiological and pharmacological fundamentals drive COVID-19 and response to treatment.
Pharmacol Res Perspect
; 10(1): e00922, 2022 02.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1664440
ABSTRACT
Why a systems analysis view of this pandemic? The current pandemic has inflicted almost unimaginable grief, sorrow, loss, and terror at a global scale. One of the great ironies with the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly early on, is counter intuitive. The speed at which specialized basic and clinical sciences described the details of the damage to humans in COVID-19 disease has been impressive. Equally, the development of vaccines in an amazingly short time interval has been extraordinary. However, what has been less well understood has been the fundamental elements that underpin the progression of COVID-19 in an individual and in populations. We have used systems analysis approaches with human physiology and pharmacology to explore the fundamental underpinnings of COVID-19 disease. Pharmacology powerfully captures the thermodynamic characteristics of molecular binding with an exogenous entity such as a virus and its consequences on the living processes well described by human physiology. Thus, we have documented the passage of SARS-CoV-2 from infection of a single cell to species jump, to tropism, variant emergence and widespread population infection. During the course of this review, the recurrent observation was the efficiency and simplicity of one critical function of this virus. The lethality of SARS-CoV-2 is due primarily to its ability to possess and use a variable surface for binding to a specific human target with high affinity. This binding liberates Gibbs free energy (GFE) such that it satisfies the criteria for thermodynamic spontaneity. Its binding is the prelude to human host cellular entry and replication by the appropriation of host cell constituent molecules that have been produced with a prior energy investment by the host cell. It is also a binding that permits viral tropism to lead to high levels of distribution across populations with newly formed virions. This thermodynamic spontaneity is repeated endlessly as infection of a single host cell spreads to bystander cells, to tissues, to humans in close proximity and then to global populations. The principal antagonism of this process comes from SARS-CoV-2 itself, with its relentless changing of its viral surface configuration, associated with the inevitable emergence of variants better configured to resist immune sequestration and importantly with a greater affinity for the host target and higher infectivity. The great value of this physiological and pharmacological perspective is that it reveals the fundamental thermodynamic underpinnings of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Systems Analysis
/
Thermodynamics
/
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Topics:
Vaccines
/
Variants
Limits:
Animals
/
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Pharmacol Res Perspect
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Prp2.922
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