As COVID-19 continues to affect our everyday lives, scientists and researchers around the world are actively working to find safe and effective treatments for the disease, as well as find ways to prevent infection.
According to the CDC, “the spectrum of medical therapies to treat COVID-19 is growing and evolving rapidly, including drugs approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and drugs made available under FDA emergency use authorization (EUA).” Currently, there are over 600 COVID-19 medicine development programs in planning stages.
COVID-19 therapeutics are medicines that are developed to help treat people who are infected with coronavirus disease. Let’s take a look at the three main categories these treatments fall in to better understand how they work.
Antiviral Drugs
Antiviral drugs help the body fight off infection by boosting the infected person’s immune system and helping to prevent the virus from replicating and entering into healthy cells.
Immunomodulators or Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
Immunomodulators are drugs that can support the immune function by modifying the immune system’s response to a threat. For example, they can decrease inflammation and prevent the immune system from damaging other parts of the body.
Monoclonal Antibodies
Monoclonal antibodies are modeled after the antibodies your body makes to fight viruses and other diseases, but they are created in the lab. These antibodies are designed to target the coronavirus spike protein. When the antibodies bind to the spike protein, they block the virus from entering your body’s cells. And if the virus can’t enter cells, it can’t make copies of itself and continue spreading within the body.
So far, the FDA has issued emergency authorizations for 11 investigational COVID-19 treatments, including a monoclonal antibody therapy from Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The investigational monoclonal antibody is now approved or authorized for emergency/temporary use in many countries around the world, including the U.S.
To learn more as well as stay up to date on what treatments are available, make sure to frequently check the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines published by the National Institute of Health.
This article is brought to you by VIR Biotechnology.
