Contribuições de animais de laboratório no contexto da Covid-19: terapêuticas e vacinas

Abstract

The disease COVID-19, caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus, has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) due to its rapid human-to-human transmission and intercontinental spread. The disease revealed its pandemic potential in view of the outbreak that occurred at the end of 2019. Currently, it has been understood as a multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, besides the lungs. Little is known about the virus, its interactions and transmission capacity, as well as to the pathogenesis of the disease, therapies, more accurate diagnoses and control tools. Given this scenario, one of the main challenges related to research aimed at COVID-19 lies in the availability of animal models that mimic the pathophysiology of the disease in humans. Due to serious human health problems, with high mortality rates, measures are required to enable the safe and effective development of vaccines, as well as studies on therapies. Therefore, animal models research becomes important, as well as carrying out pre-clinical studies to provide solutions for the current pandemic and others that may arise in order to support the design of disease prevention and control measures. Therefore, animals models are important for studies to be carried out in order to a better understanding of the disease and its physiopathogenesis, thus minimizing the number of infected and death in humans by the disease. The purpose of this research was to discuss the contributions of laboratory animals in the context of COVID-19 in relation to therapy and vaccines. For that, a systematic literature review was carried out from scientific articles that deal with the subject. The searches were carried out in the SciELO, LILACS and Google Scholar databases. It was concluded that the continuous evaluation of animal models suitable for the study of COVID-19 is of great importance for the investigation of the disease, as well as the need for pre-clinical studies in order to seek therapeutic measures of the devastating effects that this disease has caused in humanity.