The Novel Corona Virus COVID-19
About COVID-19:
- The novel corona virus COVID-19 was first reported on the month of December 2019 in wuhan city -china and it has rapidly spread to all over the world .
- On February 2020 the world health organization(WHO) named it as (covid-19) , simultaneously the international virus classification commission announced that the new corona virus was named as sever acute respiratory syndrome cornoavirus-2 (SARS-coV2) .
- The global situation report of COVID-19 on 20 April 2020 was 2314621 cases confirmed globally and total death 157847 all over the world .
- Covid-19 belongs to the family of genera betacoronaviridae , it is enveloped , single stranded ,positive sense RNA virus , the name corona virus derived from the spike proteins that surrounded the outer member of virus .
- Covid-19 is not the first virus from the family of coronaviruses , in the year 2003 a severe respiratory diseases known as sever acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was reported as an epidemic and 8000 of people being infected with total 10% of cases death .
- In 2012 another corona virus has outbreak in middle east called as middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS) and infected about 2500 clinical cases with total 35% death .
- Covid-19 incubation period is about 4 -14 days, the shedding period of virus 8-37 days but in severe cases takes about 19 days and in the critical condition takes 24 days .
About Hydroxychloroquine:
- Hydroxychloroquine has similar structure to that of chloroquine . chloroquine shows inhibitory action on the novel corona virus , but due its several adverse drug reactions chloroquine not suite for the treatment of SARS-coV-2 .
- Hydroxychloroquine has proposed due to its antiviral activity ,it is also shows better effect comparing to chloroquine . chloroquine- (N4-(7-Chloro-4-quinolinyl)-N1,N1-diethyl-1,4-pentanediamine) is an amnio acidotropic form of quinine and first synthesized in Germany in the year of 1934 and used in the treatment of malarial and many other autoimmune diseases .
- Chloroquine has antiviral activity against several diseases like HIV , hepatitis A and C viruses , Influenza A and B viruses , Influenza A H5N1 virus , Dengue virus ,chikungunya virus ,poliovirus , lassa virus and Zika virus .
- Hydroxychloroquine sulphate is a derivative of chloroquine and was fisrt synthesized in the year 1946 by addition of hydroxyl group (OH) into chloroquine structure , so produced hydroxychloroquine with less toxicity in animal .
- Hydroxychloroquine share the same therapeutic uses as well as mechanism of action to that of chloroquine . Both Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have been shown anti-viral activity in SARS-coV-2 when administrated as prophylactic – pre-treated as well as post-viral entry , indicating multiple mechanisms of action .
- HCQ and CQ are weak bases so they known to increase the pH inside the intracellular organelles including ( lysosomes , endosomes and golgi vesicles ) , specific enzymes present in the lysosomes active only at low pH around 4.5 , as the novel coronavirus SARS-coV-2 needs that enzymes for the process of replication and survive , Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine increases the pH of lysosomes and interfere the activity of this enzymes and inhibits the SARS-coV-2 , help in the treatment of the virus .
- In addition to that hydroxychloroquine can inhibit SARS-coV-2 entry through the changing the glycosylation of angiotensin converting enzyme-2 (ACE-2) receptor as well as spike protein ,experimentally confirmed that hydroxychloroquine inhibits the entry and post-entry steps of the virus . hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine also block the transport of SARS-coV-2 from early endosomes (EEs) to endolysosomes (ELs) which is important required in the release of genome in SARS-coV-2. Due to the altered pH of the endosomes and interfere the binding between tall-like receptors ( TLR7, TLR9) and their RND/DNA ligands, TLR signals suppressed due hydroxychloroquine.
- In the cytoplasm hydroxychloroquine interfere with the interaction of cytosolic DNA and the nucleic acid sensor cyclic (GMP-AMP) synthase .
- Hydroxychloroquine acts as immune modulator , inhibit receptor binding and membrane fusion , also it has been shown to down regulate pro-inflammatory cytokines including IL6 levels , and minimize cytokines release syndrome /ARDS.
- Dose of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 was recommended as 400 mg twice in a day for two days , then 200mg twice per a day for another 3 more days . Hydroxychloroquine has better therapeutic approach compared to chloroquine in the treatment of SARS-COV-2 infection .
New studies /updates about COVID-19:
- New study reported that bat intestine contain ACE2 similar to that of the human .
- Cation of SARS-CoV-2, enabling further characterization of the virus life cycle and investigation of potential mechanisms of enteric infection in COVID-19.
- Click below for more information about COVID-19 updates .
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