Assessing the Clinical Improvement in Patients with COVID-19 using Lopinavir-Ritonavir: A Systematic Review
Rania M. Magadmi *
Pharmacology department, Faculty of Medicine, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Aims: Globally the focus is towards finding an effective treatment for COVID-19 patients in order to suppress the spread of this pandemic disease. An antiviral combination of lopinavir-ritonavir is considered to be effective in treating COVID-19 patients. Therefore, the present study aims to assess the clinical improvements of lopinavir-ritonavir in COVID-19 patients.
Study Design: a systematic review study was conducted and articles published since December 2019 were included. The statistical analysis of quantitative data was performed using Review Manager (RevMan) to generate forest plots.
Results: The study showed that there was no significant difference in COVID-19 patients treated with lopinavir-ritonavir or in combination with anti-viral therapy or other conventional methods. Conclusion: the use of lopinavir-ritonavir resulted in greater adverse consequences among COVID-19 patients. It further recommends conducting meta-analysis studies with a greater number of studies to highlight the clinical improvement associated with the use of Lopinavir-ritonavir.
Keywords: Antiviral, Clinical Improvement, COVID-19, Lopinavir-ritonavir