Possible role of zinc as an adjunctive therapy in gastrointestinal symptoms of COVID-19 infectious disease

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) disease is caused by SARS-CoV-2, which is the causative agent of a high mortality disease that is of great concern to world public health. The coronavirus belongs to the largest family of RNA viruses, meaning it is a single-stranded enveloped RNA virus possessing a positive-sense RNA genome with a 5′-capstructure and 3′-poly-A tail (1). RNA viruses have evolved into a variety of replication strategies, but they are unified in the fact that an RNAdependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) functions as the main enzyme of their RNA synthesizing machinery. The RdRp is commonly embedded in a membraneassociated replication complex that is assembled from viral RNA and viral and host proteins. At present, RdRps are one of the key targets for the development of antiviral medications. An increased level of intracellular Zinc (Zn) causes the efficiently impaired replication of a number of RNA viruses by interfering with the correct proteolytic processing of viral polyproteins (2). In vitro studies have reported that coronavirus replication can be inhibited by increased Zn concentration...