Introduction
On December 31th, 2019, a group of pneumonia cases of unknown origin in
the city of Wuhan in the Hubei Province in China was detected (1) which
was later found out to be caused by a new emerging β-coronavirus, called
2019 novel coronavirus(2019-nCoV) or Severe acute respiratory syndrome
coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2) (2). On February 8th, 2020
pneumonia caused by this agent was afterward named Novel Coronavirus
Pneumonia (NCP) (3) which was later changed to Coronavirus infection
disease 2019(COVID-19). COVID-19 starting in China, rapidly spread to
other parts of the country and other nations (4) as well, with an
exponential growth rate (5) so as until April 23rd,
2020 causing 2,544,792 confirmed cases and 175,694 deaths worldwide with
the United States, Spain and Italy being affected the most (6). On
January 30th, 2020 the world health organization
declared a state of Public health emergency of international
concern(PHEIC) for the sixth time (5), and on March
11th, 2020 WHO assessed COVID-19 as a pandemic (7).
SARS-CoV-2 is an enveloped, single-stranded, positive-sense, zoonotic
member of β-coronaviruses (4, 8)which are known for causing more severe
and lethal disease (4) as in previous major epidemics like severe acute
respiratory syndrome(SARS) and middle-eastern respiratory syndrome(MERS)
(2). The first cases had a history of being in touch with seafood or
animal wholesale markets which raised the suspicion of zoonotic
transmission (9, 10), and bats were assumed to be the reservoir host
(11). The virus has an incubation period of 1 to 14 days, which for most
cases, an incubation period of 4 days has been reported (3, 5, 11) and
can be transmitted through droplets, contaminated objects, and
Human-to-Human contact whether being symptomatic or asymptomatic.
COVID-19 confirmed cases are seen mostly among adults with children
under 10 only accounting for 0.9% cases (12) and mostly being
asymptomatic or having mild forms of the disease so having the capacity
to act as carriers (1, 4). Patients mostly complain of fever, dry cough,
and myalgia with associated laboratory and radiological findings. There
is no specific treatment or vaccine for COVID-19 until now but several
potential options under investigation. In this study we aim to have a
look into potential pharmacologic treatment options for COVID-19.