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Immunomodulation as a potent COVID-19 pharmacotherapy: past, present and future
  • Decsa Hertanto,
  • Henry Sutanto,
  • Citrawati Wungu
Decsa Hertanto
Airlangga University Faculty of Medicine
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Henry Sutanto
Universiteit Maastricht CARIM School for Cardiovascular Diseases
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Citrawati Wungu
Airlangga University Faculty of Medicine

Corresponding Author:citrawati.dyah@fk.unair.ac.id

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Abstract

In the first year of its appearance, the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has affected more than 120 million individuals and killed 2 million people worldwide. The pandemic has also triggered numerous global initiatives to tackle the newly emerging disease, including the development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and the attempt to discover potential pharmacological therapies. Nonetheless, despite the success of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines development, the COVID-19 therapy remains challenging. Several repurposed drugs that were documented to be useful in small clinical trials have been shown to be ineffective in larger studies. Additionally, the pathophysiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection displayed the predominance of cytokine storm in inducing multiorgan damage. Therefore, the potential benefits of both immune modulation and suppression in COVID-19 have been extensively discussed. Here, we reviewed the roles of immunomodulation as potential COVID-19 pharmacological modalities based on the existing data and proposed several new immunologic targets to be tested in the foreseeable future.
Jul 2021Published in Journal of Inflammation Research volume Volume 14 on pages 3419-3428. https://doi.org/10.2147/jir.s322831