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©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Rifampicin for COVID-19
George D Panayiotakopoulos, Department of Clinical Pharmacology, University of Patras Medical School, Rion 26504, Greece
George D Panayiotakopoulos, The National Public Health Organization of Greece, Athens 15123, Greece
Dimitrios T Papadimitriou, Department of Pediatric, Adolescent Endocrinology & Diabetes, Athens Medical Center, Marousi 15125, Greece
Dimitrios T Papadimitriou, Endocrine Unit, Aretaieion University Hospital, Athens 11528, Greece
Author contributions: Panayiotakopoulos GD contributed to the conceptualization; Papadimitriou DT contributed to the original draft; all authors contributed to review and editing of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: George D Panayiotakopoulos serves as Vice President of The National Public Health Organization of Greece; Dimitrios T Papadimitriou has no conflict of interests to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Dimitrios T Papadimitriou, MD, MSc, PhD, Academic Fellow, Department of Pediatric, Adolescent Endocrinology & Diabetes, Athens Medical Center, 58 av. Kifisias, Marousi 15125, Greece. info@pedoendo.net
Received: July 25, 2021
Peer-review started: July 25, 2021
First decision: November 11, 2021
Revised: November 29, 2021
Accepted: February 10, 2022
Article in press: February 10, 2022
Published online: March 25, 2022
Processing time: 239 Days and 8.7 Hours
Peer-review started: July 25, 2021
First decision: November 11, 2021
Revised: November 29, 2021
Accepted: February 10, 2022
Article in press: February 10, 2022
Published online: March 25, 2022
Processing time: 239 Days and 8.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Rifampicin may prove pharmacologically effective, supplying a possible and cost-effective solution to the global battle against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, not only for treatment but also for chemoprophylaxis of those at higher risk. It is also possible to administer rifampicin by nebulization. The publications describing the in vitro mechanisms and providing proof of clinical efficacy of rifampicin against RNA viruses with their own RNA polymerase have emerged since 1969-1971. Recent in silico studies using a computer-aided approach, found rifampicin among the most promising existing drugs that can be repurposed for the treatment of coronavirus disease-2019.