Drug repurposing for COVID-19: could vitamin C combined with glycyrrhizic acid be at play by the findings of Li et al.'s database-based network pharmacology analysis?

Huang, Yu-Xi; Wang, Wen-Xiao; Tang, Yu-Ping; Yue, Shi-Jun · Brief Bioinform · 2021

other · Level V

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Abstract

The outbreak and pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 has caused a severe public health burden and will challenge global health for the future. The discovery and mechanistic investigation of drugs against Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is in deadly demand. The paper published by Li and colleagues proposed the hypothesis that vitamin C combined with glycyrrhizic acid in treating COVID-19 and its mechanistic investigation was performed by a database-based network pharmacology. In this letter, we present critical comments on the limitations and insufficiencies involved, from both the perspective of network pharmacology and current evidence on COVID-19.

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