(Bloomberg) -- A combination of antiviral drugs normally used to treat HIV didn't benefit patients hospitalized for treatment of Covid-19, confirming earlier results that hadn't been encouraging.
The two-drug treatment of lopinavir and ritonavir didn't help patients survive infection with the coronavirus, when compared with usual care, according to researchers at the University of Oxford studying a variety of potential treatments. There was no evidence that the drugs, developed by Abbott Laboratories and sold by spinoff Abbvie Inc. as Kaletra, helped patients continue to breathe without assistance or recover more quickly.
Doctors are assessing a variety of drugs that have demonstrated a benefit against other illnesses in an effort to get effective treatment for the pandemic quickly. While Oxford's Recovery trial has already shown a lack of benefit from antimalarial drugs that were touted by U.S. President Donald Trump, it identified the anti-inflammatory dexamethasone as a boon to severely ill patients.
The study has enrolled more than 11,800 patients. About 1,600 patients who got Kaletra were compared with 3,376 who received usual care, the researchers said Monday.
The Oxford researchers made the announcement after an independent committee monitoring the study conducted a review on June 25. After looking at the results, the researchers closed the arm looking at the combination, saying the evidence was convincing that it wasn't helping patients. They noted that they were unable to study the impact of patients who were already on ventilation.
The findings confirmed an earlier, smaller study of 199 patients published in the New England Journal of Medicine that likewise didn't find a benefit from the drug in severely ill patients.
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