Drug Repositioning For The Prophylaxis And Treatment Of Covid-19

Coronaviruses are large, enveloped, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA viruses and belong to the family coronaviridae. Other viruses from the same family include the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which appeared in 2002 in China, and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV ), which appeared in 2012 in Saudi Arabia. In december 2019, several patients from Wuhan, China were admitted with symptoms of pneumonia. A new virus was identified and initially called the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). On january 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) named the disease as “COVID-19” which is coronavirus disease 2019. On March 11, 2020, the WHO described its outbreak as a pandemic. Chloroquine (CQ), the antimalarial drug, elicit antiviral effects against several viruses. Previous studies reported the antiviral activity of CQ against many human coronaviruses (HCoVs) such as SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and HCoV-OC43. Recent in vitro studies (2020) reported that CQ and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is effective in inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 infection. In China, in February 2020 over 100 patients treated with (CQ) resulted in significant improvement of pneumonia. In France, on March 17, 2020, some of the COVID-19 patients were treated with (HCQ) and others treated with HCQ in combination with azithromycin to prevent bacterial infection.