Current pharmacological treatments for COVID-19: A narrative review

Sudi Indra Jaya; Yacobus Christian Prasetyo

doi:10.22146/ijpther.2881

Sudi Indra Jaya Master's Programme in Biomedical Science, Faculty of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta
Yacobus Christian Prasetyo Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana, Yogyakarta

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22146/ijpther.2881

Keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, drug treatment, RCT, clinical evidence

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has lasted more than one year. The number of daily cases and the number of deaths is still changing dynamically. As of this writing, specific drugs for COVID-19 are not yet available. This review aims to describe the key clinical evidence in pharmacological treatments for COVID-19. The article search process was carried out on the PubMed database with a combination of keywords ((“COVID-19”) OR (“SARS-CoV-2”)) AND ((“treatment”) OR (“therapy”)). In this article, there were six drugs reviewed that is corticosteroids, remdesivir, lopinavir-ritonavir, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and interleukin-6 (IL-6) receptor blockers. Hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir-ritonavir, remdesivir, and ivermectin were not recommended for COVID-19 treatments regardless of disease severity and duration of symptoms. Therefore, they were excluded from the list of drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 by World Health Organization (WHO) stated strong recommendations in favor of two drugs, namely systemic corticosteroids and IL-6 receptor blockers namely tocilizumab or sarilumab. Both of them are recommended for the treatment of patients with severe and critical covid-19 so they are included in the list of COVID-19 therapeutic drugs by WHO.