WHO approves two new medicines for Covid-19 treatment
The World Health Organization ( WHO) has recommended two new drugs for the treatment of COVID-19: baricitinib and sotrovimab.
Baricitinib, an oral drug, is "strongly recommended" for people with severe or critical COVID-19 to be given with corticosteroids, the WHO announced.
Baricitinib is part of a class of drugs called Janus kinase inhibitors (JAKs), which suppress overstimulation of the immune system. The drug is also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
The WHO guideline development group found "moderate certainty evidence that baricitinib improved survival and reduced the need for ventilation, with no observed increase in adverse effects."
Sotrovimab is "conditionally recommended" for people with mild or moderate COVID-19 but at "high risk" of hospitalization. This includes people who are "elderly, immunocompromised, with underlying conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity, and those who are not vaccinated," the UN agency said.
Sotrovimab is administered as a single intravenous infusion lasting 30 minutes. It is a monoclonal antibody drug and can be used as an alternative to casirivimab-imdevimab, another monoclonal antibody recommended by the WHO in September 2021. Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-created proteins designed to act as human antibodies in the immune system.
"Studies on the efficacy of monoclonal antibodies against Omicron are ongoing, but the first laboratory studies show that sotrovimab maintains its activity," the agency said.
The Jan.14 recommendation is the eighth update of the agency's living guidelines on therapies and COVID-19, published in the British Medical Journal, and is based on evidence from seven studies involving more than 4,000 patients with COVID-19 that they range from non-serious to critical.
The expert panel behind the guidelines also looked at information related to two other serious and critical COVID-19 drugs: the JAK inhibitors ruxolitinib and tofacitinib.
They determined that trials of small studies "showed no benefit and suggested a possible increase in severe side effects with tofacitinib." The WHO has since made a conditional recommendation against their use.
The humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) applauded the new WHO recommendation for baricitinib. In a statement, the group urged governments to take steps to make sure patent protections "do not hinder access to this treatment."
MSF noted that US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly has filed and obtained numerous patents, including in Brazil, Russia, South Africa and Indonesia, thereby blocking the production of affordable versions of baricitinib.
"Despite the fact that baricitinib is already approved for other conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis – and generic versions are already available in India and Bangladesh at much lower prices than those practiced by Eli Lilly – baricitinib will not be widely available for treatment. of COVID-19 as long as the company continues to block the production of generics in most places, ”said MSF.
“An Indian manufacturer valued baricitinib at $ 5.50 per treatment course of 4 mg once daily for 14 days and the lowest list price in Bangladesh (pdf) is $ 6.70. This is nearly 400 times lower than Eli Lilly's exorbitant July list price of $ 2,326 per course of treatment. "
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The WHO article approves two new medicines for the treatment of Covid-19 comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/oms-approva-due-nuovi-medicinali-per-la-cura-del-covid-19/ on Sun, 16 Jan 2022 19:11:57 +0000.