Numerous contenders—from a controversial malaria medication to treatments that regulate the immune system—are now in clinical trials
Tanya Lewis of Scientific American writes that as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to claim lives around the world, there are no specific treatments for the disease beyond supportive care. Several drugs already prescribed for other illnesses have shown promise against the novel coronavirus in preclinical studies. And they are now being tested in clinical trials or given to patients on a compassionate-use basis. But experts warn that these medications have yet to prove effective in treating COVID-19 patients.
As of this writing, the virus has infected more than two million people worldwide and caused more than 130,000 deaths. A vaccine and new treatments could take years to fully develop, but the World Health Organization recently launched a large international trial called Solidarity to test four existing therapies. They are the closely related malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine; the antiviral medication remdesivir (originally developed to treat Ebola); the antiviral combination of lopinavir and ritonavir (used for HIV); and those two HIV drugs plus the anti-inflammatory small protein interferon beta. A number of separate clinical trials of these medications and others are underway in several countries, including the U.S.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved remdesivir for treating COVID-19 patients under the compassionate-use protocol (a designation that gives patients with life-threatening illnesses access to an experimental drug). And the agency has granted an emergency use authorization—which allows for otherwise unapproved drugs or uses during an emergency—for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.