Ontology and Knowledge Graph-based Harmonization in the Context of CO-19
A Birds-eye (Re)View of Acid-suppression Drugs, COVID-19, and the Highly Variable Literature
We consider the recent surge of information on the potential benefits of acid-suppression drugs in the context of covid-19, with an eye on the variance (and confusion) across the reported findings--at least as regards the popular antacid famotidine.The inconsistencies reflect contradictory conclusions from independent clinical-based studies that took roughly similar approaches, in terms of experimental design (retrospective, cohort-based, etc.Beyond this pressing therapeutic issue, conflicting information on famotidine must be resolved before its integration in ontological and knowledge graph-based frameworks, which in turn are useful in drug repurposing efforts.To begin systematically structuring the rapidly accumulating information, in the hopes of clarifying and reconciling the contradictory information, we consider the contradictory information along three proposed'axes': (1) a context-of-disease axis, (2) a degree-of-[therapeutic]-benefitaxis, and (3) a mechanism-of-action axis.By grouping the studies conceptually and thematically, we identify three eras in the progression of our understanding of famotidine and covid-19.Harmonizing these findings is a key goal for both clinical standards-of-care (covid and beyond) as well as ontological and knowledge graph-based approaches.
