WHO Recommends Two COVID-19 Treatment Drugs

Two medications were suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday to treat COVID-19.

For patients with severe or "critical" Coronavirus disease, the organisation recommended baricitinib, a rheumatoid arthritis medicine, while for people with mild or moderate disease, it recommended sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody.

According to Medscape, baricitinib is a 2-milligram tablet that is usually prescribed by doctors for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. On Nov. 19, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration approved a 4-milligram dose for COVID-19 patients who were hospitalised and required supplemental oxygen, ventilation, or "extracorporeal membrane oxygenation."

FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn, M.D. said at the time of the approval, "Today's action demonstrates the FDA's steadfast efforts to make potential Coronavirus treatments available in a timely manner, where appropriate, while continuing to support research to further evaluate whether they are safe and effective."

"The FDA continues to explore every available avenue as part of our Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program to facilitate innovative therapies for patients as rapidly as possible to battle COVID-19."

According to the FDA, the unapproved medicine sotrovimab has been approved for EUA usage in adults and paediatric patients over the age of 12 who have a high risk of developing more severe Coronavirus disease, including hospitalisation and death.

According to the WHO, the medicine is an alternative to the monoclonal antibody "cocktail" of casirivimab and imdevimab for older people with comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and those who have not been vaccinated.

The WHO said that it is the organization's seventh recommendation, based on evidence from seven trials involving more than 4,000 inpiduals with COVID-19, with disease severity ranging from mild to severe to critical.

While it recommends these treatments, it also rejected two additional therapies, ruxolitnib and tofacitinib, for use in COVID-19 patients with severe illness "because to their unknown consequences," it stated.

Despite the WHO's guideline, a December Nature article indicated that sotrovimab must be three times as concentrated to be effective against omicron as it is for other types.

According to Stuart Turville, a virologist at the Kirby Institute in Sydney, Australia, the drug's efficacy was not affected as much as previous monoclonal antibody treatments that proved ineffective against the omicron form.

In December, he told the outlet, "It's nothing like what we observed for the others."

In a Dec. 17, 2021, update, the US Department of Health and Human Services said it was "actively preparing" 55,000 doses of sotrovimab for "rapid allocation" to countries that were expecting to receive the treatment "soon."

The dosages will be distributed to regions based on COVID-19 incidence rates and hospitalizations, according to the CDC.