Treatment options in people with COVID19: Selecting the best armamentarium against the novel virus

Shaikh, K.; Shrestha, C.; Dutta, D.

Novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection is a global pandemic, of high infectivity, variable mortality, with currently no established treatment This review summarizes different molecules which are being evaluated for COVID19 treatment PubMed and Medline, search for articles published to March 2020 was done using terms "COVID19" OR "corona-virus 2019" OR "2019-nCoV" or "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus" AND "treatment" As of today, we have >350 RCTs happening with different agents COVID19 treatment agents can be broadly classified into immuno-modulators (prevent hyperimmune-activation and cytokine storm) and anti-viral therapies (prevent virus entry, replication or viricidal) Hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine, Interferon-l, glucocorticoids, interleukin antagonists, Ulinastatin, intravenous immunoglobulins, plasmapheresis are main immunomodulators showing initial positive outcomes Umifenovir Lopinavir/Ritonavir, Ribavirin, remdesivir and Ravipiravir are some of the major antiviral agents showing initial encouraging results It may be concluded that the most successful regimen is going to be multi-drug therapy, a combination of immunomodulatory agent with anti-viral agent