Hundreds of people recovered from the new coronavirus. Many spontaneously. Others also received drug treatments. Are there therefore drugs that can counteract the proliferation of the virus in infected patients? Or were only drugs active on symptoms used and was healing spontaneous as for others?
The Italian Society of Pharmacology (Sif), through a press release published by ANSA, intervenes to clarify four things to know.
- ARE THERE DRUGS ON THE HORIZON? Today we are faced with the attempt to use ready-made active ingredients. However, there are scientists for whom it would be advisable to avoid drugs that have been shown to be active on other viruses, but whose target has low relevance in Covid-19, and there are clinical studies with these drugs (Baloxavir Marboxil, Oseltamivir and Umifenovir) which presumably they will give their response for the month of May. More promising results seem to be expected from the drug Remdesivir for which there are satisfactory reports of its use for Ebola, the results of which are expected by the end of April. Also tested drugs such as Favipiravir, normally used for flu type A and B and, with other reasons, very old drugs such as chloroquine antimalarial, or anti-HIV drugs and, again, the antivirals Saquinavir, Indinavir, Lopinavir and Ritonavir. Also worth mentioning is Tocilizumab, a monoclonal antibody normally used for the treatment of some forms of arthritis. Lastly, Sif underlines that "the phase is still the study phase" but that there is "a worldwide scientific coalition to find suitable solutions quickly".
- ARE THERE DRUGS HELPFUL AGAINST COVID-19 INFECTION IN PATIENTS? Covid-19 is new and, in order to identify a drug capable of acting against it, it is necessary to identify the virus structure or structures that lend themselves to being the target for successful attack. As was the case with AIDS.
- WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT SARS-COV-2? We know that its genetic code is RNA (like that of influenza, HIV, SARS, Ebola viruses), we know that it has a high degree of infection (it passes very easily from a sick individual to a healthy one) but we still need to know how the infection develops, why it is so different between individual and individual, because some individuals do not manifest the disease while others face very serious, often lethal pneumonia. We must quickly answer these questions to find something that will allow us to stem the virus.
- ARE VACCINES NEEDED TO TREAT PATIENTS WITH COVID-19? For the treatment of viral epidemics, vaccines are certainly the best solution because they reduce the spread of the infection and reduce the number of people infected. But for Covid-19 we don't have it yet. Vaccines also take time to develop. Many of them are under development and for some the necessary authorization has already been requested to test them on humans. In any case, vaccines are not the correct weapon for patients who have the disease in progress, for which real drugs would be useful.