Editor: Aigerim Akhmetova
Author: Aldiyarbek Nurlan
Translator: Tursunova Balkadisha
As COVID-19 continues to spread around the world, especially as the number of cases increases during what some call the "fall surge," repurposing medications already approved by the U.S. food and drug Administration for new therapeutic purposes continues to be the most effective and cost-effective approach to treating or preventing the disease.
According to the results, a new artificial intelligence platform developed by researchers at the Lerner Research Institute to identify possible drugs for COVID-19 has shown that melatonin is a promising candidate.
Here, researchers used network medicine methodologies and large-scale electronic medical records of patients at the Cleveland clinic(in the Us city of Cleveland) to identify clinical manifestations and pathologies common to COVID-19 and other diseases. Specifically, they measured the affinity between host genes / proteins and genes that are well associated with 64 other diseases across multiple disease categories.
Overall, they determined that autoimmune, pulmonary, and neurological diseases showed significant network affinity to SARS-CoV-2. Genes / proteins identified 34 drugs as candidates for repurposing, the main one being melatonin.
"Recent research shows that COVID-19 is a systematic disease affecting multiple types of cells, tissues, and organs, so knowing the complex interactions between the virus and other diseases is key to understanding the complications associated with COVID-19 and identifying reusable medications. Our study provides a powerful integrative network medicine strategy for predicting the manifestations of COVID-19-related diseases and facilitating the search for effective treatment, " the researchers said.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201109152223.htm
