Therapeutic drugs for SARS-CoV-2 treatment: Current state and perspective

A mixture of essential oils from three Cretan Aromatic Plants (thyme, Greek sage and Cretan dittany, CAPeo) inhibits SASR-CoV-2 proliferation:in vitroevidence and a Proof-of-Concept intervention study in mild ambulatory COVID-19-positive patients

“…Thanks to the combined world-wide scientific effort and the analysis of SARS-CoV-2 virus (O’Leary and Ovsepian, 2020), successful and safe vaccines are now begin to emerge (Polack et al, 2020;Voysey et al, 2020). Although multiple molecules are at various stages of preclinical and clinical development, there largely remains an unmet need for prophylactic and therapeutic regimens to combat the disease, with proposed measures being scarce and non-specific (Bolarin et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2020a), with the exception of monoclonal antibodies (Baum et al, 2020;Hansen et al, 2020;Weinreich et al, 2020) and dexamethasone (Cain and Cidlowski, 2020;Recovery Collaborative Group et al, 2020), which primarily target hospitalized patients in intensive care units. In this respect, the need for non-expensive therapeutic regimens, safe and effective in non-critically-ill patients and efficient for their management in ambulatory settings, remain unmet.…”

“…An international effort is actually directed towards an efficient therapy (Baum et al, 2020;Hansen et al, 2020;Weinreich et al, 2020), or the development of efficient vaccines (Polack et al, 2020;Voysey et al, 2020). A number of established pharmaceutical molecules and patients’ plasma have been tested as drug candidates for the treatment of COVID-19, with variable results (see (Bolarin et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2020a;Wang et al, 2020b) and references herein). Among the multitude of products tested against COVID-19 disease, a number of natural products, including herbal extracts, have also been assayed (critically reviewed in (Benarba and Pandiella, 2020) and references herein), targeting mainly the viral proteases.…”

Artemisia and Artemisia-based products for COVID-19 management: current state and future perspective

“…Some antiviral agents including repurposed off-label drugs such as CQ, HCQ, Redmesivir, etc. have been in the spotlight as frontline therapies for COVID-19 (Bolarin et al 2020 ). However, some of them have demonstrated cardiotoxicity concerns among many other after-administration side-effects (Yang et al 2010 ).…”

Comment on: Safety and efficacy of Favipiravir in moderate to severe SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia

“…The paper’s conclusion was that Adding Favipiravir to the treatment protocol did not reduce the number of ICU admissions, intubations, or In-hospital mortality compared to the Lopinavir/Ritonavir regimen. The authors inferred one possible explanation for their negative findings regarding the efficacy of Favipiravir in SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia suggested that in some studies [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] , it could be the proposed mechanisms for the pathogenicity of this virus.…”

“…However, several studies have explicitly mentioned the active and efficient effect of Favipiravir in the first 5 days of the infection [10] , [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] . These studies were not mentioned in the article published by the authors.…”