COVID-19 Treatment

see COVID-19 Prevention.

Gupta et al. in a narrative review with Pubmed and Google Scholar search till 23 March 2020. Search terms were, COVID-19, treatment of coronavirus, COVID 19 and following terms; chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, ibuprofen, ACE-inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers, cardiovascular disease, diarrhoea, liver, testis and gastrointestinal disease.

They discuss evidence regarding role of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in treatment and prophylaxis, use of inhibitors of the renin angiotensin system, safety of ibuprofen, unusual clinical features like gastrointestinal symptoms and interpretation of tests for cardiac enzymes and biomarkers.

While the conclusions on management of COVID-19 patients with co-morbidities are based on current evidence, however, data is limited and there is immediate need for fast track research. ¹⁾.

A statement by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China encouraged researchers to focus their efforts on epidemic prevention and to publish their results in Chinese.

The emphasis on publishing clinical research in English helps to facilitate knowledge exchange between Chinese scientists and the rest of the world. They hope the research community will make efforts to disseminate all findings relevant to the outbreak of COVID-19 in Chinese in addition to English publishing outlets. For example, clinical research papers about COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 in any Lancet journal were translated into Chinese, and these translated Articles were provided rapidly to the public in China free of charge. Broad dissemination in both Chinese and English will accomplish the goals of communicating timely and crucial findings to the international scientific community, while also disseminating this information to health-care workers on the frontline who need to understand the epidemiological and clinical features of COVID-19. This strategy will improve effective control strategies to ultimately contain the virus and protect the health of the public ²⁾.

Chloroquine for COVID-19 treatment.

Potential effect of blood purification therapy in reducing cytokine storm as a late complication of severe COVID-19 ³⁾.