Treatment for Covid-19
Ever since the covid-19 pandemic engulfed the world scientist and medicos are baffled about providing a line of treatment for the deadly virus. During the earlier part of the year when the virus wreaked havoc in many nations various treatments were suggested however, all these attempts proved to be short lived.
Even today medicos are prescribing various antibiotics coupled with some vitamin therapies to treat covid-19 patients but whether these medications are proving effective or not can still be debated.
Now as the world is grappling with another strain of the deadly virus scientists in the United States have been able to chart the first atlas showing how the genetic material of the novel coronavirus interacts with the proteins in human cells, an advance which may provide a starting point for the development of new treatments against COVID-19.
Researchers say that one of the most urgent tasks is to understand all the molecular interactions between the virus and the cells it infects. They explained that a detailed understanding of these interactions will help identify the processes in host cells which favour the multiplication of the virus, and the ones which activate the host immune system.
While the SARS-CoV-2 virus uses host proteins to replicate until now there has been no detailed understanding of all the proteins occurring in human cells which interact with the viral genetic material — its RNA.
In the current research, published in the journal Nature Microbiology, the scientists created the first global atlas of direct interactions between the SARS-CoV-2 RNA and the proteins present in human cells. Based on the findings, the researchers also identified important regulators of viral replication.
The scientists infected human cells with the novel coronavirus, purified the viral RNA and identified the proteins bound to it. The atlas of RNA-protein interactions offers unique insights into SARS-CoV-2 infections, enabling the systematic breakdown of factors influencing the replication of the virus, and host defense strategies — a crucial prerequisite for the development of new therapeutics.
From the results, the scientists identified 18 host proteins that play an important role during SARS-CoV-2 infection, and found 20 small molecules that may inhibit these proteins.
According to the scientists, three out of four small molecules they tested inhibited viral replication in different human cell types — findings that may open up new ways to treat COVID-19.
Since Covid-19 vaccines are yet to prove their cent percent efficacy it is high time that knowing about therapeutic treatment of the deadly virus can bring in some hope not only among the medicos but people as well as the availability of vaccine to the people in third world or less developed countries can still take year’s together.
So by the time the vaccine can be made available to the people at large, the only respite can be provided by solving the jigsaw puzzle that will open up the treatments against the novel coronavirus.
KV Network
