05-11-2020, 09:08 AM
For patients with mild to moderate disease, a "triple therapy" consisting of ribavirin (a generalized antiviral used mostly for RSV), ritonavir/lopinavir (an HIV antiviral), and interferon (a substance the body produces to fight viruses) beat ritonavir/lopinavir alone in reducing viral shedding, speeding up recovery, and speeding discharge from the hospital. Nobody in this study died (which is surprising), so they couldn't look for a mortality benefit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/healt...tment.html
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance...4/fulltext
The good news is that it is randomized trial, and the effect was quite significant (a reduction in hospitalization of 5.5 days, which is actually a bigger effect than the remdisivir study). On the other hand, it was an open-label study (so everyone knew which arm patients were on), and it was smaller than the remdisivir study, so the effect sizes are probably overstated (an underpowered study will show wider confidence intervals than a well-powered study, so if a given study happens by chance to be positive, it will demonstrate a larger effect, since a moderate effect would not be statistically significant and would be considered "negative").
BC
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/healt...tment.html
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance...4/fulltext
The good news is that it is randomized trial, and the effect was quite significant (a reduction in hospitalization of 5.5 days, which is actually a bigger effect than the remdisivir study). On the other hand, it was an open-label study (so everyone knew which arm patients were on), and it was smaller than the remdisivir study, so the effect sizes are probably overstated (an underpowered study will show wider confidence intervals than a well-powered study, so if a given study happens by chance to be positive, it will demonstrate a larger effect, since a moderate effect would not be statistically significant and would be considered "negative").
BC