. Dhruva Sharma; . Neha Sharma; . Preksha Sharma; . Ganapathy Subramaniam
Volume 11, Issue 1 , January 2021, , Pages 1-8
Abstract
In December 2019, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2)became evident in Wuhan, China, and then spread rapidly worldwide. Numerous drugsand vaccines are ...
Read More
In December 2019, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2)became evident in Wuhan, China, and then spread rapidly worldwide. Numerous drugsand vaccines are under clinical trial pipeline for investigation against coronavirus disease2019 (COVID‑19) infection. The aim of this systematic review was to discuss aboutinvestigational new as well as repurposed drugs currently under trial for COVID‑19infection. An exhaustive search was carried out for this review article including scientificdatabases of PubMed, Embase, ClinicalTrials.gov, WHO International Clinical TrialsRegistry Platform, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, Google Scholar, and Scopussearch engines using keywords of “Coronavirus,” “COVID‑19,” “MERS‑CoV,” “MERS,”“SARS‑CoV‑2,” and “SARS‑CoV‑1” and “Solidarity trial” and their Persian‑equivalentkeywords from inception until May 2020. After screening the 296 articles searched fromdifferent databases (PubMed = 97 and other search engines = 199), 52 articles were includedin the final systematic review. It was found that the World Health Organization introduceda Solidarity international clinical trial to discover an effectual treatment of COVID‑19. Basedon established in vitro and in vivo activity against different strains of coronaviruses, fourrepurposed drugs – remdesivir, lopinavir/ ritonavir combination, lopinavir/ritonavirwith beta‑1a, chloroquine, and hydroxychloroquine – were considered for clinical trialagainst COVID‑19. A number of other drugs and vaccines are under clinical trial pipelinefor investigation against COVID‑19 infection. Despite multitude of treatment optionsavailable, treatment of choice is still not well established. Moreover, optimum supportivecare and monitoring of seriously ill patients is the need of the hour.