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COVID-19 Pandemic and Traditional Chinese Medicines
Published in Hanadi Talal Ahmedah, Muhammad Riaz, Sagheer Ahmed, Marius Alexandru Moga, The Covid-19 Pandemic, 2023
Roheena Abdullah, Ayesha Toor, Hina Qaiser, Afshan Kaleem, Mehwish Iqtedar, Tehreema Iftikhar, Muhammad Riaz, Dou Deqiang
In 2019 at the end of December numerous cases with unknown cause concerning viral pneumonia, were found in Wuhan, which is a city situated in the Hubei province of China. This unknown viral pathogen was named On February 11th, 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) [1]. It was suggested that the responsible pathogen for causing the disease belongs to coronavirus family Coronaviridae by The International Committee on Taxonomy of viruses (ICTV) and named it as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [2]. Amongst recurrent symptoms are fever, fatigue, and dry cough. In more severe cases, they include acute respiratory distress syndrome and dyspnea meaning shortness of breath, speech, and/or movement loss, chest pain or pressure. Some rare cases also appear to be asymptomatic but still highly contagious. The virus is highly contagious and the outbreaks of COVID-19 occur at mass scale due to its risk of airborne transmission. Around 14% of corona patients require hospitalization along with oxygen support. Out of these 14% of the severe cases, approximately 5% of patients are transferred to intensive care unit (ICU) due to severity of disease [3,4].
Review on Imaging Features for COVID-19
Published in S. Prabha, P. Karthikeyan, K. Kamalanand, N. Selvaganesan, Computational Modelling and Imaging for SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, 2021
Currently, health care workers are giving their full efforts and support to control this epidemic. In February, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the authorized name for the current coronavirus as COVID-19, which is produced by SARS-CoV-2 (Hageman, 2020; Sun et al., 2020; Kuldeep et al., 2020). Originally, a group of coronavirus patients was identified in the Huanan South China Seafood marketplace in Wuhan (Gralinski and Vineet, 2020). Coronavirus is in the Coronaviridae group and the Coronavirinae subgroup. The novel coronavirus is genetically distinct. Up to 2020, there were six Covs known to infect humans (Fan et al., 2019). COVID-2019 disease emerged in China and spread rapidly to other countries. The severity of the disease and its rapid spread spurred WHO to announce a global health emergency day on 31st January, 2020. Afterwards, a pandemic situation was declared on 11th March, 2020. At present, there is no effective treatment for COVID-19, since there is no approved vaccination or drugs for giving humans with coronavirus infections. Currently all nations are working hard to prevent the further spread of COVID-19 (Kuldeep et al., 2020).
Coronavirus Epidemics and the Current COVID-19 Pandemic
Published in Debmalya Barh, Kenneth Lundstrom, COVID-19, 2022
Aparna Bhardwaj, Prateek Kumar, Shivani Krishna Kapuganti, Vladimir N. Uversky, Rajanish Giri
The name “coronavirus” was given because of the crown-like appearance of the club-shaped spike (S) protein on the viral surface (see Figure 1.1). Coronaviruses were previously thought to be associated only with mild respiratory illnesses in humans, such as the common cold, that usually resolve on their own and were not considered fatal or a dangerous threat until the SARS outbreak in 2002–2003, MERS in 2012, and recently COVID-19, which has claimed millions of lives worldwide. Currently, the whole world is locked in a pandemic situation. It has been over a year since the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020 [4, 5], and we are still struggling to find a way out. The first COVID-19 case was reported with diverse pneumonia-like symptoms in December 2019, in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China [4–7]. From its origin, COVID-19 has spread rapidly worldwide since March 2020, with over 170 million cases and over 3.5 million deaths (as of May 28, 2021 Worldmeter Corona cases data) [4, 5]. Further, identification and detailed molecular studies revealed that the causative agent for this disease was a novel virus (hence being named the Novel coronavirus 2019 or nCoV-2019) from the known Coronaviridae family [8]. Five laboratories in China independently performed etiological and sequencing studies for its identification [2, 8]. After taxonomic analysis, the International Committee of Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) later named the virus Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) [5], as the earlier outbreak of another dangerous human coronavirus, SARS-CoV, had occurred in 2002.
Attitude towards Covid-19 Vaccine: A Cross-Sectional Urban and Rural Community Survey in Punjab, Pakistan
Published in Hospital Topics, 2023
Iqra Mushtaque, Muhammad Riaz Dasti, Misbah Mushtaq, Ahmad Ali
According to the World Health Organization, viral infections are on the increase and pose a significant public health risk (Cascella et al. 2020). A new viral infection has emerged at the end of 2019, known as corona virus; severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) (Dhama et al. 2020; Rodriguez-Morales et al. 2020). Corona viruses are members of the Coronaviridae family, which infect a wide range of hosts, causing symptoms and infections ranging from the common cold to extreme illnesses like covid-19 (Zhu et al. 2020). Corona viruses that have recently emerged pose a potential threat to global public health. The current covid-19 outbreak is the third such outbreak in humans in the last two decades (Munster et al. 2020). The corona virus can cause various symptoms, ranging from asymptomatic or mild symptoms to severe or fatal illness (Esakandari et al. 2020). SARS-CoV-2 is a virus that causes covid-19 that differs from other corona viruses that cause minor diseases in humans, such as the common cold (Baloch et al. 2020). Compared to non-extreme cases of covid-19, severe cases were more likely to have more comorbidities, the most common of which were diabetes, hypertension, and thyroid disorders (Alqahtani et al. 2020).
Fatal ReincaRNAtion of VIRUS causing COronaVIrus disease
Published in International Reviews of Immunology, 2022
Coronaviridae-family viruses are enveloped positive-strand RNA viruses and were previously known to cause mild respiratory illness in humans and other mammals until the year 2002, when a fatal outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV emerged via wild cats in China. The outbreak infected many people and caused more than 750 deaths. This outbreak was also responsible for tremendous economic losses around the world. Ten years after this incident, in the year 2012 in Saudi Arabia another coronavirus emerged known as Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) which caused more than 800 deaths. Then, in the year 2019, another coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 emerged in China and caused a worldwide pandemic which affected almost all of the countries in the world leading to millions of deaths around the globe. This special issue of International Reviews of Immunology focuses on various aspects of SARS-CoV-2 and host interaction in terms of the development of immune responses such as various degrees of inflammation, antibody responses, and effects on host physiology. This issue also discusses approaches to diagnosis through qualitative and quantitative estimation of SARS-CoV-2-associated immune molecular signatures. Additionally, a few articles in this issue also discuss different aspects of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development (Figure 1).
The design and discovery of phospholipase A2 inhibitors for the treatment of inflammatory diseases
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, 2021
Charikleia S. Batsika, Anna-Dimitra D. Gerogiannopoulou, Christiana Mantzourani, Sofia Vasilakaki, George Kokotos
Coronaviruses (CoVs) are responsible for various respiratory and enteric diseases with differing pathogenicity in humans and animals. In 2017, a study was conducted exploring the relation of GIVA cPLA2 with coronaviruses. It was shown that the replication of various +RNA virus families is inextricably connected with the activity of GIVA cPLA2, suggesting a new direction for the development of broad-spectrum antiviral drugs. Inhibition of GIVA cPLA2 by the inhibitor RSC-3388 resulted in considerable effects on viral RNA and protein accumulation in human coronavirus 229E-infected Huh-7 cells [113]. This inhibitor also exhibited antiviral effect against other viruses belonging to the Coronaviridae and Togaviridae families, while it was found inactive against members of the Picornaviridae family. As a consequence, enzymes which are involved in cellular lipid metabolism, such as the various PLA2s, constitute a new target for the development of small-molecule inhibitors exhibiting antiviral activity.