Bengaluru Doctor Claims To Be One Step Closer To Finding A Cure For COVID-19

By now, the COVID-19 outbreak has spread to everywhere except Antarctica. And the scientists around the world are racing to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

In this race to search for a cure, Dr. Vishal Rao, an oncologist from Bengaluru, has filed for a government review for a cocktail of drugs that his team developed. And according to Rao, his team will prove that this concoction is effective.

The goal of the treatment is to retrigger the immune system which is affected after a person tests positive for COVID-19. He also made a clarification that the medicine the team working on wasn’t a vaccine.

Dr. Rao said that they had created a mixture of cytokines. This mixture, when injected into a COVID-19 positive patient, could trigger their immune system.

Cytokines are secreted by some of the immune system’s certain cells and affect other cells.

Human body cells are capable of releasing interferon chemicals to get rid of viruses. But it doesn’t work that way with COVID-19 cases, causing a patient’s immune system to be weakened.

Dr. Rao claimed that he had some preprint which suggested that interferon may be effective in treating COVID-19.

Interferons are signaling proteins that host cells make and release in when the body is attacked by viruses. A cell that has been infected with a virus will release interferons that cause nearby cells to strengthen their anti-viral defenses.

Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy’s research suggests that researchers are working on several methods to treat COVID-19, including preventing the virus from penetrating human cells, damaging its replication, affecting the human immune response as well as vaccines.

The most promising compound in treating COVID-19 is remdesivir which is a nucleotide analog prodrug. The compound is being tested to treat the Ebola virus. Remdesivir stopped MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV’s replication and it has proved its effectiveness in animal models.

But according to researchers, more research should be done to test the compound’s efficacy.

>>> When Will The CO.VID-19 Pandemic End?