Concerning your diagnosis of choice, how effective are the current treatment strategies?
How effective are the current treatment strategies?
Concerning your diagnosis of choice, how effective are the current treatment strategies?
The new type of coronavirus (COVID-19), SARS-CoV-2 originated from Wuhan, China and has led to a worldwide pandemic. COVID-19 is a novel emerging infectious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 characterized as atypical pneumonia.
As of July 1, 2020, more than 10 million people worldwide had been infected with SARS-CoV-2. The typical manifestations of COVID-19 include fever, sore throat, fatigue, cough, and dyspnoea combined with recent exposure. Most of the patients with COVID-19 have mild or moderate disease, however up to 5–10% present with severe and even life-threatening disease course. The mortality rates are approximately 2%. Therefore, there is an urgent need for effective and specific antiviral treatment.
Currently, supportive care measures such as ventilation oxygenation and fluid management remain the standard of care. Several clinical trials are currently trying to identify the most potent drug or combination against the disease, and it is strongly recommended to enroll patients into ongoing trials.
Antivirals can be proven as safe and effective only in the context of randomized clinical trials. Currently several agents such as chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, favipiravir, monoclonal antibodies, antisense RNA, corticosteroids, convalescent plasma and vaccines are being evaluated. The large numbers of therapeutic interventions aim to define the most efficacious regimen. The aim of this article is to describe the treatment strategies that have been used for COVID-19 patients and review all the available literature.
The new type of coronavirus (COVID-19), SARS-CoV-2 originated from Wuhan, China and has led to a worldwide pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that COVID-19 has become a global health concern.
The typical symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, sore throat, fatigue, cough, and dyspnoea combined with recent exposure. Due to interventions and control measures from the governments around the world and the changes in personal behaviors (such as masks wearing and social isolation), the number of new confirmed and suspected cases has been decreasing globally.
However, the risk of transmission has not been eliminated yet and the COVID-19 outbreak remains a major challenge for clinicians. Most of the patients with COVID-19 have mild or moderate disease, however up to 5–10% present with severe and even life threatening disease course. The mortality rates are approximately 2%.
Therefore, there is an urgent need for effective and specific antiviral treatment. Currently, supportive care measures such as ventilation oxygenation and fluid management remain the standard of care. Several clinical trials are currently trying to identify the most potent drug or combination against the disease and it is strongly recommended to enroll patients into ongoing trials. Antivirals can be proven as safe and effective if so, only in the context of randomized clinical trials.
Currently several agents such as chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, favipiravir, monoclonal antibodies, antisense RNA, corticosteroids, convalescent plasma and vaccines are being evaluated. The large numbers of therapeutic interventions aim to define the most efficacious regimen. The aim of this article is to describe the treatment strategies that have been used for COVID-19 patients and review all the available literature.
Convalescent plasma
Plasma from patients that have been cured from COVID-19 infection, namely convalescent plasma, is a treatment with considerable historical background in other infectious diseases, but still explorative in the context of SARS-CoV-2. In a pandemic era, convalescent plasma could constitute an easily accessible source of antiviral antibodies.
Convalescent plasma may offer various beneficial actions in COVID-19 disease. First and foremost, the apparent mechanism pertains to the fact that antibodies from convalescent plasma can suppress viremia. Similarly to the strategies implemented in the SARS epidemic, theoretically, the administration of convalescent plasma at the early stage of the disease would be more effective.
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