Remdesivir for the Treatment of COVID-19: A Systematic Review of the Literature

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the spread of SARS-CoV-2 a global pandemic. To date, coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has spread to over 200 countries, leading to over 1.6 million cases and over 99,000 deaths. Given that there is neither a vaccine nor proven treatment for COVID-19, there is currently an urgent need for effective pharmacotherapy. To address the need for an effective treatment of SARS-CoV-2 during the worldwide pandemic, this systematic review of intravenous (IV) remdesivir was performed. Remdesivir, an anti-viral prodrug originally developed to treat Ebola virus disease, has shown broad spectrum activity against the Coronavirus family. A recent case report reported improvement of clinical symptoms with remdesivir in a patient with COVID-19. After conducting a systematic search of 18 clinical trial registries and three large scientific databases, we identified 86 potentially eligible items. Following removal of duplicates (n = 21), eligible studies were reviewed independently by two authors. After the first round of screening, inter-rater agreement was 98.5% (κ = 0.925). After the second round of full-text screening, inter-rater agreement was 100%. A total of seven ongoing and recruiting clinical trials of remdesivir (100-200 milligrams, intravenous [IV]) were included. We identified the following primary outcomes: patients discharged (n = 2); time to clinical status improvement (n = 2); improved O2 saturation (n = 2); body temperature normalization (n = 2); and clinical status (n = 1). Secondary outcomes in all identified studies included documentation of adverse events. Phase 3 trials are expected to be completed between April 2020–2023. Therefore, despite supportive data from in vitro and in vivo studies, the clinical effectiveness of IV remdesivir for treatment of COVID-19 and potential side effects remain incompletely defined in the human population

Effects of Auditory Stimuli on Blood Pressure, Respiration Rate, and Heart Rate Changes While Watching a Suspenseful Video

An article that appeared in JASS, issue 2017The purpose of this study was to test the effect of auditory and visual stimuli on subjects’ physiological response. The auditory stimuli included white noise, calming music, and music anticipated to induce stress, which were divided among three groups. The physiological response was measured by the following parameters: diastolic and systolic blood pressure, respiration rate, and heart rate. These values were compared to baselines taken while participants received no auditory stimuli and values taken while participants listened to unique stimuli based on their group assignment. We hypothesized that calming music would result in similar values to those taken as baselines while watching the horror movie scene, while the scary music would result in elevated heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration rate compared to the control. Our results displayed a reduction in heart rate with calming music and an increase in heart rate with stressful music alone, however the results were not significant enough to conclude a definitive relationship between the auditory stimuli and heart rate. Values for blood pressure and heartbeats per minute were also not significant enough to support our hypothesis