As the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, scientists are still in a race against time to develop medicines and vaccines to respond. Among the potential treatments is a combination of HIV and flu medications may improve conditions in infected patients. However, according to Dr. David Ho, Clyde ’56 and Helen Wu Professor of Medicine and director of the Wu Family China Center at Columbia University, for acute viral infections one may not need cocktail or combination therapy.
"There should be a systematic effort to look for drugs or chemicals that have already been tested but not yet licensed . . . to see if we could chase down some drugs that are pretty far along in development and if active could be rapidly applied to help control this situation," said Dr. Ho. during his interview on China Global Television Network (CGTN).
Dr. Ho also serves as director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. Under the leadership of Dr. Ho, center researchers unraveled the dynamic nature of HIV replication in patients, thereby revolutionizing our basic understanding of the disease. This knowledge led them to champion combination antiretroviral therapy that has resulted in unprecedented control of HIV in patients.
