The 2019 outbreak of corona virus disease began from Wuhan (China), transforming into a leading pandemic, posing an immense threat to the global population. The WHO coined the term nCOVID-19 for the disease on 11th February, 2020 and the International Committee of Taxonomy of Viruses named it SARS-CoV-2, on account of its similarity with SARS-CoV-1 of 2003. The infection is associated with fever, cough, pneumonia, lung damage, and ARDS along with clinical implications of lung opacities. Brief understanding of the entry target of virus, i.e., ACE2 receptors has enabled numerous treatment options as discussed in this review. The manuscript provides a holistic picture of treatment options in COVID-19, such as non-specific anti-viral drugs, immunosuppressive agents, anti-inflammatory candidates, anti-HCV, nucleotide inhibitors, antibodies and anti-parasitic, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase inhibitors, anti-retroviral, vitamins and hormones, JAK inhibitors, and blood plasma therapy. The text targets to enlist the investigations conducted on all the above categories of drugs, with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic, to accelerate their significance in hindering the disease progression. The data collected primarily targets recently published articles and most recent records of clinical trials, focusing on the last 10-year database. The current review provides a comprehensive view on the critical need of finding a suitable treatment for the currently prevalent COVID-19 disease, and an opportunity for the researchers to investigate the varying possibilities to find and optimized treatment approach to mitigate and ameliorate the chaos created by the pandemic worldwide.
Keywords: ACE-2; Anti-viral drugs; Blood plasma therapy; Corona virus; Pandemic; SARS-CoV-2.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.