Emerging Therapies for COVID-19: The Pharmacological Basis

Overview

Course Description

This Course Lecture was recorded on 24 April 2020.

There are currently no approved or known therapies that have been shown to be safe and effective for the treatment of COVID-19, with the exception of remdesivir, which has been granted an emergency-use authorisation in the United States of America. There are several treatments being used off-label (use of a licensed medication for an indication that has not been approved by a national drug regulatory authority), on a compassionate-use basis, or as part of a randomised controlled trial. It is important to note that there may be serious adverse effects associated with these of label use of drugs, and that these adverse effects may overlap with the clinical manifestations of COVID-19. Understandably making clinical management even more complicated.

In this 49 minute course; broken into bite sizes, Pharm Mark Harisson explores the pharmacological basis of the most common off label drugs currently being used locally and internationally.

What you will learn

1. Characteristics of important human coronaviruses
2. Pathophysiology of COVID-19/SARS
3. Clinical, laboratory and radiological manifestations of COVID-19
4. Plausible pharmacological mechanisms of emerging drugs for COVID-19
5. Ethical considerations for drug use in COVID-19