Potential Drug Options for Treatment of COVID-19: A Revie

ABSTRACT

A virus known as novel corona (SARS-CoV-2) which causes COVID-19 pandemic disease is an invisible enemy, appeared for the first time in the world's most populous country, China, and became a reason for causing death of many people all over the world. As a result of this, a remarkable investigation and clinical trials are ongoing to discover the treatment for this devastating pandemic disease. Effective vaccines and anti-viral treatments are immediately required in order to control and eradicate the disease. But still, neither vaccine nor any drug is approved for prevention and control of COVID-19 pandemic. Proper and well-designed strategies are needed to reduce social and economic consequences arisen due to this pandemic disease. There are some drugs that are used for other diseases which are showing valuable outcomes to elicit the virus causing COVID-19. However, there are no approved drugs full of clinical evidence. A systematic review literature search was carried out from different electronic databases to identify available articles on the effectiveness of drugs against COVID-19.Four therapies suggested recently via World Health Organization (abbreviated "WHO") that were later incorporated for under taking efficient clinical trial of the newly established project (European Discovery), comprise remdesivir, combination of anti-viral drugs (lopinavir and ritonavir), lopinavir plus ritonavir with beta interferon, and anti-malarial drugs like hydroxyl chloroquine and chloroquine. On May 25 2020, hy-droxychloroquine and chloroquine were suspended by WHO from Solidarity trial because of their safety and efficacy concerns. However, there were neither effective specific antivirals nor drug combinations approved which were supported by great-level of clinical evidence.Copyright © 2020 Bentham Science Publishers.