New da­ta from ran­dom­ized tri­al dent HIV drug strat­e­gy against Covid-19

It’s not all good news com­ing out of the first round of clin­i­cal da­ta in­ves­ti­gat­ing treat­ment op­tions for Covid-19. In a new study pub­lished in the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, re­searchers sug­gest­ed that an HIV drug that had emerged as a promis­ing can­di­date ear­ly on missed the clin­i­cal mark.

Adding lopinavir–ri­ton­avir — a com­bo that Ab­b­Vie mar­kets as Kale­tra — to stan­dard sup­port­ive care con­ferred “no ben­e­fit” to se­vere­ly ill pa­tients, they con­clud­ed, ei­ther in terms of clin­i­cal im­prove­ment or mor­tal­i­ty. Fur­ther­more, gas­troin­testi­nal ad­verse events were more com­mon in the drug arm, al­though se­ri­ous ad­verse events cropped up more in the stan­dard care group. In the tri­al, 199 pa­tients were ran­dom­ized to the two co­horts.

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