During this COVID-19 pandemic, a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association characterizes comorbidities of 5,700 patients hospitalized in the New York area. Ninety-four percent of these patients had chronic health problems, and 88% had two or more. With COVID-19, comorbidities often significantly worsen the chances of the patient’s ability to recover.
Studying the relationship between comorbidities and COVID-19 can potentially unlock the key to new treatments. Diabetes, hypertension, and obesity seem to be common comorbidities of COVID-19. A global phase 3 clinical trial of the potential for SGLT2 inhibitor dapagliflozin to reduce COVID-19 progression from AstraZeneca and St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute examines the protective effect of dapagliflozin among adults with heart failure, chronic kidney diseases, or type 2 diabetes.
Using an intelligent knowledge base such as ResoluteAI’s Foundation is critical to understanding these comorbidities and their impact on COVID-19 patient outcomes. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Foundation can allow researchers to search publications, patents, technology transfer opportunities, news, clinical trials, and grants as if they’re single-source.
Using the graphical interface, researchers can visualize the intersections between diseases researched.
For instance, a search of heart disease, diabetes, and coronavirus, quickly surfaces 303 publications detailing the results from studying comorbidities of COVID-19, including literature of ACE2 - the target of study by virologists from Scripps Research Institute.
Understanding how the virus exploits ACE2 has already been proven very powerful. This led to the French health ministry warning that ibuprofen use is not advised because it is thought to increase the number of ACE2 receptors in the body.
Testing any potential treatment that interferes with underlying mechanisms will involve testing the effects of different diseases. Using ResoluteAI’s Foundation platform, researchers can easily navigate between different types of diseases and work out the effects of potential ACE2 inhibitors.
Research into different types of comorbidities related to COVID-19 may unlock treatments not just for the coronavirus but also other comorbidities. These types of research benefits are what make an AI-enabled research tool like ResoluteAI’s Foundation so critical to understanding the full scope of the available research, and mapping out the underlying relationships of comorbidities to the disease.
