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 about the potential mechanisms of action of various treatments that have been tested in patients with COVID-19.