HIV treatment not beneficial for COVID-19 patients - study

Agencies

The cocktail of antiviral drugs doctors use to treat HIV has no beneficial effect on patients hospitalized with COVID-19, a new study said.
The study results follow a RECOVERY trial conducted by British scientists at the University of Oxford in June which ruled out any meaningful benefit of lopinavir-ritonavir in lowering mortality among hospitalized patients.

The latest study by The Lancet medical journal says that 23 percent of those given the drugs died within 28 days of treatment beginning, compared to 22% of those given usual care.

The treatment also did not reduce the length of a patient's hospital stay or the chances they would be put on a ventilator.
"Results from this trial show that it is not an effective treatment for patients admitted to hospital with COVID–19," said Professor Martin Landray from the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, who co-leads the RECOVERY trial.
AbbVie Inc's Kaletra is a combination of the drugs lopinavir and ritonavir, used together to fight HIV. The company had increased its supplies while it was determining whether it can be used to treat COVID-19.

The World Health Organization (WHO) in July discontinued its trial of lopinavir-ritonavir after it failed to reduce mortality.