ReviewPharmacology & therapeutics2022
Antiviral therapy for COVID-19: Derivation of optimal strategy based on past antiviral and favipiravir experiences.
Review in Pharmacology & therapeutics, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 34 citations in OpenAlex.
- Temperature-Dependent Viral Pathogenicity: Implications for Attenuation of Viral Vaccines.Viruses · 2025Review
- Eco-sustainable chromatographic method for the determination of favipiravir and nitazoxanide for COVID-19: application to human plasma.BMC chemistry · 2025Article
- Convenient screening of the reproductive toxicity of favipiravir and antiviral drugs inHeliyon · 2024Article
- An Overview of SARS-CoV-2 Potential Targets, Inhibitors, and Computational Insights to Enrich the Promising Treatment Strategies.Current microbiology · 2024Review
- Rapid development and mass production of SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing chicken egg yolk antibodies with protective efficacy in hamsters.Biological research · 2024Article
- Novel analogues of a nonnucleoside SARS-CoV-2 RdRp inhibitor as potential antivirotics.Beilstein journal of organic chemistry · 2024Article
- Xuanfei Baidu decoction in the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Efficacy and potential mechanisms.Heliyon · 2023Review
- Three-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography successfully identified myocardial trabeculation mimicking left ventricular apical thrombus in a patient with COVID-19.Journal of medical ultrasonics (2001) · 2023Article
- Better design leads to better results - Importance of virological outcome design in clinical trials for antiviral treatment of coronavirus disease 2019.Pediatric investigation · 2023Article
- Extracellular Vesicle-Based SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine.Vaccines · 2023Review
- How to use COVID-19 antiviral drugs in patients with chronic kidney disease.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2023Review
- Overview of Antiviral Drug Therapy for COVID-19: Where Do We Stand?Biomedicines · 2022Review
- A Comprehensive Review on the Efficacy of Several Pharmacologic Agents for the Treatment of COVID-19.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Evolving therapeutic strategies for severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome: from past to future.Therapeutic advances in infectious diseaseReview
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Favipiravir, a broad-spectrum RNA-dependent RNA polymerase inhibitor, inhibits the replication of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) at significantly lower concentrations than the plasma trough levels achieved by the dosage adopted for influenza treatment and exhibits efficacy against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia. Although high doses of favipiravir are required due to the molecule being a purine analog, its conversion into the active form in infected cells with active viral RNA synthesis enhances the antiviral specificity and selectivity as a chain terminator with lethal mutagenesis. Another characteristic feature is the lack of generation of favipiravir-resistant virus. COVID-19 pneumonia is caused by strong cell-mediated immunity against virus-infected cells, and the inflammatory response induced by adaptive immunity continues to peak for 3 to 5 days despite antiviral treatment. This has also been observed in herpes zoster (HZ) and cytomegalovirus (CMV) pneumonia. Inflammation due to an immune response may mask the effectiveness of favipiravir against COVID-19 pneumonia. Favipiravir significantly shortened the recovery time in patients with mild COVID-19 pneumonia by 3 days with the start of treatment by the 5th day of symptom onset. Since both CMV and COVID-19 pneumonia are caused by adaptive immunity and prevention of cytomegalovirus pneumonia is the standard treatment due to difficulties in treating refractory CMV pneumonia, COVID-19 pneumonia should be prevented with early treatment as well. In the present study, we have comprehensively reviewed the optimal antiviral therapy for COVID-19 based on clinical trials of favipiravir for the treatment of COVID-19 pneumonia and the concurrently established therapies for other viral infections, particularly HZ and CMV pneumonia. Optimally, antivirals should be administered immediately after COVID-19 diagnosis, similar to that after influenza diagnosis, to prevent COVID-19 pneumonia and complications resulting from microangiopathy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.