Blood pressure drug ineffective in treating even mild Covid-19 cases, as per 'real world' data from India

A drug used to treat high blood pressure was found to be ineffective in treating even mild COVID-19 cases, according to a study based on 'real world' data from India. Scientists, from the London School of Hygiene, University of Oxford and TPP House, UK, have provided 'real world' evidence on the effectiveness of COVID-19 treatments, through two studies, helping shed more light on whether the drugs used to treat covid cases can prevent people from becoming seriously ill.

One of the studies, which is published in the British Medical Journal, is based on data from India and involves angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), or drugs widely used to treat high blood pressure and heart disease, including telmisartan.

The study is a randomised controlled trial involving 787 patients, 778 from India and nine from Australia, with an average age of 49 years, admitted to the hospital from May 2020 to November 2021. Included patients who had predominantly mild disease, although the researchers aimed to recruit patients at risk of severe covid, the study said.

Half of the participants received ARBs and the other half, or controls, received a placebo for 28 days.

A standard dose of the ARB drug telmisartan, starting dose 40 mg/d, was used only in India while the type and dose of ARB were at the discretion of the treating physicians in Australia.

These particular drugs were chosen because they work by regulating the same angiotensin protein which the coronavirus uses to enter the body, and in the laboratory have shown potential protectivity against the severe effects of coronaviruses, the study said.

However, after 14 days of treatment, the researchers found no meaningful difference in illness severity between the two groups.

These findings should help to inform clinical practice. The lack of effect provides reassurance that it is safe to use these protective agents in people indicated, with or without covid-19.

The other study is an observational one carried out in England between December 2021 and February 2022. Researchers used hospital records and death certificates for high-risk adults with covid-19, with an average age of 52, to compare the effectiveness of the antibody treatment sotrovimab with the antiviral drug molnupiravir.

The researchers found that those who received sotrovimab were at a substantially lower (46 per cent) risk of severe covid-19 outcomes than those receiving molnupiravir, within 28 days of treatment.

The researchers say that their "real-world findings within a time period when both drugs were frequently prescribed and when new variants of covid-19 were circulating provide evidence of current effectiveness of sotrovimab over molnupiravir", according to the study.

Their analysis also "supports the conclusion that sotrovimab remains beneficial in fully vaccinated patients, which now represent the majority of the covid-19 patient population in many settings", the study said.

Both studies have some important limitations.

For instance, in the observational study, some misclassification about the cause of death or hospital admission may have occurred, and the researchers cannot rule out the possibility that differences in the initial severity of covid-19 or other unmeasured factors between treatment groups may have influenced their results, the study said.

In the randomised controlled trial, the researchers were unable to source a placebo in Australia, meaning participants and treating clinicians knew they were taking an active drug. Participants were also treated with a relatively low drug dose, so the effect of higher doses remains unknown, the study said.

Nevertheless, key strengths included the scale, level of detail and completeness of the underlying data in the observational study, good adherence to study treatment and an adaptive design that allowed the study question to be answered most quickly in the randomised trial, the study said.

Results were consistent when restricted to fully vaccinated people and also after further analysis of patients treated between February and May 2022 when the BA.2 omicron variant of covid-19 was dominant in England, suggesting that they are relevant to current clinical care, the study said.

There is currently ongoing discussion about the effectiveness of different antibody and antiviral treatments for covid-19 with recent World Health Organization guidance recommending against the use of sotrovimab.

However, both drugs are currently available for use in England, the study said.

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