COVID-19 is a devastating global pandemic around the world. While the majority of infected cases appear mild, in some cases individuals present respiratory complications with possible serious lung damage. There are no specific treatments for COVID-19 as yet, though a number are under evaluation, including experimental antivirals. Sofosbuvir, the clinically approved anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) drug, is also capable of suppressing other families of positive-strand RNA viruses; Flaviviridae and Togaviridae. Coronaviruses are a family of positive-strand RNA viruses with conserved polymerase, so SARS-CoV-2 RdRp is very likely to be effectively inhibited by sofosbuvir. More importantly, sofosbuvir is safe and well tolerated at 400 mg daily in a 24 week therapeutic regimen. Sofosbuvir active metabolite, however, shows an extremely high intracellular stability So, it is hypothesized that SARS-CoV-2 infection could also be susceptible to sofosbuvir and we were convinced to design and run a clinical trial to evaluate the effect of sofosbuvir 400 mg (in combination with velpatasvir 100 mg, as add-on treatment, in addition to standard of care) on the COVID-19. However, we believe that this manuscript/ correspondence should be made available to the international scientific community as soon as possible, with the help of this esteemed journal. Ó 2020 IMSS.

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COVID-19 is a devastating global pandemic around the world. While the majority of infected cases appear mild, in some cases, individuals present respiratory complications with possible serious lung damage. There are no specific treatments for COVID-19 as yet. Many repurposed antiviral drugs have had disappointing outcomes. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), an enzyme that physiologically counters renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system activation, functions as a receptor for both SARS viruses. The current study discusses on vague role of ACE2 under physiologic/pathologic conditions. The catalytically inactive hrsACE2 has been also proposed as an efficient treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s13738-020-02049-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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