HIV Drugs and Covid-19
British scientists said Monday that a mixture of antiviral drugs used for HIV had a little positive impact in the COVID-19 hospital.
The results “convincingly rule out any meaningful mortality benefit of lopinavir-ritonavir in the hospitalized COVID-19 patients we studied,” scientists who conducted a RECOVERY trial at the University of Oxford said.
As compared to 1,596 patients with lopinavir-ritonavir and 3,376 patients in a control group, scientists have not observed a difference in the death rate, duration of hospital stay, or chance of being on a ventilator.
Because of the difficulties of handling the drug mix, the scientists struggled to draw conclusions about the efficacy of the ventilator patients.
The World Health Organization is also researching Lopinavir-ritonavir.
The Oxford-based RECOVERY report assessed the efficacy of six therapies, for a theoretical number of 11,800 COVID-19.
The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine had been discovered by another arm, had no benefits either.
Dexamethasone, which is a steroid, was found by the arm of the study to decrease the mortality risk in patients who needed oxygen.
