HIV-AIDS and SAR-COV-2: Importance of HIV-AIDS in SARS-CoV-2 Research and Drug Development

Jane Mawia Kilonzo, Christine Jobita Ichia, Purity Kasaino

HIV-AIDS, genome, mutations, SARS-CoV-2, vaccine.

The outbreak of Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) Disease (COVID-19) has put the world on alert. Experts suggest that almost everyone in the world is susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and to date, there are no effective treatments. In light of the references published, SARS-CoV-2 has demonstrated more mutations in its genome giving new strains of the virus just like HIV-AIDS. This has made it difficult to developahighly effective vaccine for prevention of the novel COVID-19. There have been some serious side effects of the vaccination thus a number of people are not willing to be vaccinated. The three main vaccines—Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford AstraZeneca—all target the spike protein of the virus, where these variants have mutations therefore the vaccines are not 100% effective. This review aims to analyze the similarities of SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-AIDS and use the HIV-AIDS experience to research more on SARS-COV-2 and find probable drug targets for the virus which will not mutate continuously.