COVID-19 and Treatment Approaches

A research was conducted in patients with fever, cough and shortness of breath in Wuhan, China which these symptoms caused by SARS-CoV-2 and this disease is identified as COVID-19 in January 13,2020. The most important reason for the high mortality rate is that the pathogenesis of COVID-19 infection has not been fully explained and an antiviral therapy which has proven as effective and safe for SARS-CoV-2 has not been developed. In many countries including Turkey, unapproved drugs were used outside of their indication terms in order to treat and prevent the COVID-19 infection. There is currently no evidence-based, effective and reliable treatment for COVID-19 infection worldwide, including our country. Our knowledge of COVID-19 changes very rapidly, and as we understand the pathogenesis of the disease, new treatment approaches are being discussed. The vast majority of articles published in the period of COVID-19 consist of small case series and they are published without serious evaluations. Thus it is beneficial to approach carefully in terms of safety and effectiveness of the drugs in this article and also this situation should be considered while reviewing the data in this article. It is also important to conduct randomized controlled clinical trials involving large and well-planned case series under the current conditions.