As you well know that there is no proven therapy in COVID-19 till data. Now two antiviral medications named Favipiravir and Remdisivir remain in the race of this pandemic condition in Bangladesh. So I would like to know about your experience about antiviral medications in COVID-19.
It was found that a in a trial significant reduction in the median time to viral clearance with favipiravir was observed as compared with lopinavir/ritonavir. Further, by day 14, 91.4% of patients in the favipiravir arm had radiographic improvement versus 62.2% in the lopinavir/ritonavir arm. There was a significantly lower rate of adverse events in patients receiving favipiravir
The results of several ongoing randomized controlled trials to assess the efficacy of favipiravir for COVID-19 will further elucidate the role of favipiravir in the management of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Favipiravir, previously known as T-705, is a prodrug of a purine nucleotide, favipiravir ribofuranosyl-5'-triphosphate. The active agent inhibits the RNA polymerase, halting viral replication. Most of favipiravir's preclinical data are derived from its influenza and Ebola activity; however, the agent also demonstrated broad activity against other RNA viruses. In vitro, the 50% effective concentration (EC50) of favipiravir against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was 61.88 μM/L in Vero E6 cells.
Limited clinical experience has been reported supporting the use of favipiravir for COVID-19. In a prospective, randomized, multicenter study, favipiravir (n = 120) was compared with Arbidol (n = 120) for the treatment of moderate and severe COVID-19 infections. Differences in clinical recovery at day 7 were observed in patients with moderate infections (71.4% favipiravir and 55.9% Arbidol, P = .019). No significant differences were observed in the severe or severe and moderate (combined) arms.73 These data support further investigation with randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of the efficacy of favipiravir for the treatment of COVID-19.
Favipiravir in Covid-19
Suranjith L Seneviratne, Visula Abeysuriya, Sanjay de Mel, Ishan De Zoysa, Roshan Niloofa
There are evidences to believe that favipiravir is showing promising results on COVID-19 patients.
Mahendra Pal, Malangori Parande, Zia Ullah Khan, and Isam Alkhalifawi @ thank you so much for sharing your nice explanation and experience.