Chinese trials found out that HIV medication Lopinavir/Ritonavir and antiviral drug Arbidol has not improved the condition of the coronavirus patients suffering from mild to moderate illness. Compared to the 86 patients treated without drugs in the study, those patients given the HIV and antiviral drugs did not improve any quicker.
Additionally, those given the antiviral drugs also reported side effects including, loss of appetite, nausea, diarrhea.
Not recommended as treatment for COVID-19 patients
Due to its side-effects on the patients, the researchers do not recommend that these drugs shall be used as a cure for COVID-19. They recommend that researchers should keep working to find an effective cure against COVID-19. But for now, scientists should take appropriate caution, use strict guidelines and scientific clinical trials before drawing any conclusions about antiviral regimens.
But since they only tested the drugs to patients with mild to moderate cases of the infection, the researchers said that it could have different effects for people with critical illness.
The Lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) was one of the most promising treatments for coronavirus after test trials done in the laboratories showed that it stopped coronavirus from replicating. NHS is currently testing the drug in the UK as part of RECOVERY, the biggest COVID-19 trial.
Oxford University is leading the study conducting trials on five existing drugs on more than 6,000 patients all over the country, according to the Daily Mail.
Recovery trials
Umifenovir, the generic name of Arbidol is a soviet-era flu and cold medication usually used in Russia and China. But both Arbidol and Lopinavir are protase inhibitors that stick to viral molecules and prevent them from spreading and multiplying.
The latest research on these drugs was done by the Centre for Infectious Diseases of Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital in Guangzhou. They divided the 86 patients they have for the study into three groups.
The first group consists of 34 volunteers and were given lopinavir/ritonavir, the second group of 35 patients were given Arbidol, and the last group served as the control group and received supportive care.
They studied the results of the three groups that came out after a week and after 14 days. But results show that there are no differences between groups in the rates of fever reduction, cough alleviation, or improvement of lung inflammation, according to Linghua Li, the co-lead author of the study and the vice director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases.
This result is disappointing, said Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading. As days pass, we are beginning to see many disappointing early drug trials, and in this case, the drugs were developed for different viruses and not made specifically to target coronavirus.
But it is too early to give up on drug trials. Ideally, drug treatment should be given on early diagnoses when symptoms are not yet visible. If given at the appropriate time, these drug treatments can still impact the disease by improving the recovery rate, and limit the spread of the virus.
