With over 90 million COVID-19 infections globally and no effective therapy to date, identification of new treatment is of paramount importance. The newly approved vaccines will reduce infections, however there will not be sufficient quantities to vaccinate all, and therefore, effective treatments are still urgently needed.
COVID-19 has serious effects for some patients, while others individuals experience no effects (asymptomatic carriers). While there are likely to be a many reasons for this, we hypothesise that some individuals may be protected due to drugs they are taking at the time of infection. We aim to collect information from individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 regarding symptoms and medication use. The ultimate aim of this study is to identify individual drugs or drug combinations that can be re-purposed.
Drug re-purposing provides a fast route to identifying approved drugs that can be deployed in the clinic to treat a disease that is different to the one it was originally approved for. Due to the large numbers of individuals who have tested positive, there is sufficient data to identify any associations between positive outcomes and medication use. We have designed an anonymous online survey which is translated into 10 languages. This project involves data collection and analysis in order to identify if any drugs or drug combinations may be helpful in treating COVID-19.
