“It can be more severe for some persons, and can lead to pneumonia or breathing difficulties.
More rarely, the disease can be fatal. Older people, and people with pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes and heart disease appear to be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill with the virus.”
The advantage of repurposing a drug is all of the details surrounding the drug development are already known, from the chemical synthesis steps and manufacturing processes to information regarding the phases of clinical testing.
The researchers wrote: ”Therefore, repositioning of launched or even failed drugs to viral diseases provides unique translational opportunities, including a substantially higher probability of success to market as compared with developing new virus-specific drugs and vaccines, and a significantly reduced cost and timeline to clinical availability.”