The search is consistent, and the vaccine trials are on-going, but things have taken a stop for worse. Generally, a vaccine takes about ten years to be fully developed and distributed among civilians so that a disease could be primarily controlled before it spreads any further.
COVID-19 has spread globally, and researchers are trying to develop a cure, which could finally be a breakthrough in this disease’s fatality. But the testing times for science isn’t over yet, and humanity is suffering collectively. The past few months have forced us to think about the way we were living, and more than that, it has forced us to rethink our attitude towards our health due to the fear of contracting a disease that has no cure.
Although a new study might have proposed a whole idea about specific drugs, which was amidst us for a very long time, a group of researchers has been able to repurpose three pre-existing medicines, which could be the potential treatment for COVID.
The new study has proposed the three pre-existing drugs as a potential cure for COVID is useful during the early stages of the disease. This study, which appeared in the journal ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, could help the researchers test the dependent variable (the patient) ‘s clinical trials’ effects.
The Treatments so far and the Alternative Approach to it.
The experts’ present understanding says that keeping in mind the death rate recorded up to 1,150,000 deaths due to COVID and the stats require more urgent need to develop a cure. A study recorded a safe and effective vaccine to prevent or cure the disease takes full ten years in development. Still, the present circumstances demand a much more immediate response and action from various medical experts and researchers.
Even after hurrying towards developing a cure, a proper and effective vaccine could only be produced after 18 months of effort and consistent research. The contagious and deadly nature of COVID is taking lives, and the symptoms remain still a mystery on so many levels.
Researchers have found a new alternative to developing a cure until a vaccine is fully ready and operational on an accurate level. A chance to help individuals recover from the disease and decrease their mortality rate has now been made possible by repurposing certain drugs already made available to everyone but could potentially cure COVID.
For now, this repurpose development of an existing drug could be a long shot since there is yet no vaccine available in the market, and it could be an assured beginning of combating an uncertain fatal virus. A present drug being used by doctors to help speed up the process of recovery is remdesivir.
Remdesivir was developed to cure the Ebola virus in 2014, and now it has been used to support a COVID patient get better. Although WHO claimed that the drug is ineffective on an individual’s mortality rate, it could somehow help in a COVID patient’s recovery process with mild symptoms.
To find out a potentially useful drug and repurpose it for the treatment of COVID-19, researchers typically use the technique of high throughput screening (HTS) that involves
automating the testing of many different medications, allowing for a much more rapid process than using human teams. Researchers then analyze the results with a computer.
~ Medical News Today
The researchers now don’t believe in the accuracy and reliability of the HTS sourcing test since it showed some overlapping with the effectiveness of the developing drug. Since the previous testing method didn’t prove to be a useful source, experts turned towards a newer source of testing; ligand-based virtual screening (LBVS) protocol.
Hydroxychloroquine is one of those drugs that has been considered a potential drug combination for treating COVID for a few months. The testing of this new repurpose drug with hydroxychloroquine would only identify with LBVS testing and helped the researchers finally obtain trusted end-results.
It is essential to note that researchers believed hydroxychloroquine to be only effective on the COVID virus only in test tubes but not in real life. The new drug’s necessity required an appropriate combination with hydroxychloroquine. Only when it is undoubtedly approved of its effectiveness on an individual. Hence, the end-results were again separately tested to verify their accuracy.
The Three Pre-existing Drug Cure and Its future Scope
The researchers’ theoretical findings after considerate testing of 4000 drugs with the help of LBVS testing led to an understanding that only three pre-existing drugs were considered eligible for repurposing it furthermore in the development of COVID cure.
The experts made this experiment and their opinion a solid base to be used for the clinical trial. These three pre-existing drugs include; antimalarial drug amodiaquine, the anti-psychotic zuclopenthixol, and the blood pressure medication nebivolol. Experts have stated that these three drugs, combined with remdesivir or antiviral drug favipiravir, could be a potential treatment for COVID.
The conclusion now is that remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine are both drugs that are only clinically tested to be effected in test-tube experiments but not in reality (live humans). But the search remains consistent so that the main agenda is achieved; to reduce the mortality rate and help people recover more from this fatal death trap of pandemic.
