In Wuhan, 199 seriously ill Covid-19 patients were given an HIV / AIDS drug. It brought “no benefit beyond standard therapy”.
An HIV / AIDS drug with the active ingredients lopinavir and ritonavir is now also being used in Covid 19 patients after initial trials in SARS and MERS. A first clinical study with nearly 200 patients in Wuhan, China, for critically ill patients has had little positive effect, the Chinese team of authors now reports in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Obviously you shouldn’t have high hopes. “In hospitalized adult patients with severe Covid-19 disease, no benefit compared to standard therapy was registered with lopinavir / ritonavir,” wrote the team of authors led by Bin Cao from the National Clinical Research Center for Pneumology in China. However, one has to continue researching. In addition, the patients enrolled in the study would have been patients with a very severe form of Covid 19. Another drug therapy, for example with the substance remdesivir, might be better for this.
When the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic broke out in Wuhan, the large research group set out to quickly conduct a clinical trial with the protease inhibitor drug in order to be the first to scientifically demonstrate a possible effect of the globally approved drug for the treatment of HIV / AIDS Document Covid-19. This was done at a clinic in Wuhan.
Similar mortality after 28 days
99 of the 199 patients with severe illness were randomly assigned to the lopinavir / ritonavir group (in addition to the standard therapy), and a hundred comparable patients aged around 58 years only received the standard therapy. There was no placebo because time was so tight. Primarily, it should be assessed whether treatment with the drug leads to an improvement in the condition more quickly or not. All patients had poor blood oxygen saturation with or without oxygen. All of them were seriously ill.
In the group as a whole, the administration of the combination medication had no influence on the time until the clinical picture improved. “After 28 days, mortality in the lopinavir / ritonavir group was similar at 19.2 percent versus 25 percent in the standard therapy group.” The curves for viral load in the respiratory tract were almost completely the same.
Only in a modified analysis, without taking into account three patients who had died prematurely, was there a faster improvement in the condition by one day (15 instead of 16 days). However, the patients who received the protease inhibitor only needed six days of intensive medical care compared to eleven days in the group under exclusive standard therapy. Finally, the proportion of patients with a significant improvement in their condition after 14 days was higher among the patients who received the drug treatment, at 45.5 versus 30 percent (standard therapy alone).
(APA)
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