Ideas, Inventions And Innovations
COVID-19 Unmasked: Math Model Suggests Optimal Treatment Strategies
A biology-based mathematical model indicates why COVID-19 outcomes vary widely and how therapy can be tailored to match the needs of specific patient groups.
Getting control of COVID-19 will take more than widespread vaccination; it will also require better understanding of why the disease causes no apparent symptoms in some people but leads to rapid multi-organ failure and death in others, as well as better insight into what treatments work best and for which patients.
Credit: CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAMS
To meet this unprecedented challenge, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), in collaboration with investigators from Brigham and Women s Hospital and the University of Cyprus, have created a mathematical model based on biology that incorporates information about the known infectious machinery of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and
Getting control of COVID-19 will take more than widespread vaccination; it will also require better understanding of why the disease causes no apparent symptoms in some people but leads to rapid multi-organ failure and death in others, as well as better insight into what treatments work best and for which patients.
To meet this unprecedented challenge, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), in collaboration with investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the University of Cyprus, have created a mathematical model based on biology that incorporates information about the known infectious machinery of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and about the potential mechanisms of action of various treatments that have been tested in patients with COVID-19.