Antiviral Drugs and Their Roles in the Treatment of Coronavirus Infection

Abstract

Viruses are the major pathogenic agents that cause various diseases. Antiviral drugs are used for the treatment of viral infections. Emergent advances of antiviral drugs are focused on two different approaches: targeting the host cell factors or the viruses themselves. Antiviral drugs that directly target the viruses include virus entry inhibitors, virus attachment inhibitors, uncoating inhibitors, protease inhibitors, polymerase inhibitors, nucleoside inhibitors, integrase inhibitors, and nucleotide reverse transcriptase. The protease inhibitors, viral DNA polymerase, and integrase inhibitors are the most commonly used antiviral drugs. Still, there are no effective antiviral drugs existing for several viral infections. Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) or SARS-CoV-2 is the newest member of the coronavirus family. No specific drugs particularly antiviral drugs have been approved for the treatment of COVID-19. Thus, it is extremely crucial to identify new drugs for the treatment of the COVID-19 outbreak. Various antiviral drugs are used for COVID-19 treatment. Currently, various drugs are under investigation to treat COVID-19 patients. Promising clinical outcomes for COVID-19 can be obtained by using alpha-interferon, remdesivir, lopinavir-ritonavir, favipiravir, ribavirin, umifenovir, oseltamivir, etc. Here, we reviewed anti-COVID-19 potencies of currently available antiviral drugs, and some antiviral drugs have been effective or prevent the spread of coronavirus.