{"id":101619,"date":"2021-04-15T12:59:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T07:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=101619"},"modified":"2021-05-08T13:32:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-08T08:02:45","slug":"importance-of-clinical-trials-in-covid-19-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/importance-of-clinical-trials-in-covid-19-treatment\/","title":{"rendered":"Importance of Clinical Trials in COVID-19 Treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><b>Synopsis: <\/b>Clinical Trials have been instrumental in<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the development of treatment for Covid-19 so far.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Introduction<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on March 11, 2020. Doctors did not know how to treat patients with COVID-19 in the beginning. Clinical care was dominated by opinion, narratives, and code of belief in the first few months.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, it was believed that hydroxychloroquine could cure COVID-19. The truth is hydroxychloroquine does not benefit COVID-19 patients.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After one year, many medicines which do not cure Covid-19 are still in use, such as steam inhalation, multivitamins, mineral supplements, ivermectin, and chloroquine, etc.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>How the clinical trials helped in finding the best treatment?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clinical trials are important for finding the best treatment. Doctors treated symptoms and provided life support until these trials produced results.<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Firstly,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> many COVID-19 patients developed blood clots and treated with blood-thinning medications. Other <\/span><b>treatments included oxygen, breathing support ventilators <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for severely ill patients, kidney dialysis, and supporting heart with blood pressure medications.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Secondly, COVID-19 demanded for producing high-quality evidence quickly.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There was a requirement for designing trials to test many treatments at once with innovative designs such as platform trials and adaptive trials.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, <\/span><b>The RECOVERY trial <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">network in the U.K., the REMAP-CAP trial globally focusing on critically ill patients, and the WHO-led SOLIDARITY trial.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>RECOVERY verified that there was no benefit of using hydroxychloroquine<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, azithromycin, lopinavir-ritonavir, colchicine, and convalescent plasma.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>REMAP-CAP<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> found that <\/span><b>hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir-ritonavir were harmful<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to use. It proved that there is no benefit with convalescent plasma.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>SOLIDARITY highlighted the lack of benefit of Remdesivir<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It is an antiviral drug that possibly shortens the illness duration.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Thirdly, it is important that the results of these clinical trials<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> should be interpreted into clinical practice by healthcare professionals managing COVID-19 patients.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h5><b>What are the drugs that have been proven to benefit COVID-19 patients?<\/b><\/h5>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Firstly, Corticosteroid (dexamethasone) is effective in COVID-19<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> patients who require oxygen and in severely ill patients (hydrocortisone).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Secondly, two interleukin-6 receptor blocking drugs (tocilizumab and sarilumab) benefit COVID-19 patients. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They show enhanced results used in combination with corticosteroids, specifically in patients with moderate and severe COVID-19.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><b>What should be done?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thus, clinical trials show that apart from supportive care (oxygen, ventilatory support), the only drugs that reduce mortality are steroids and interleukin-6 receptor blocking drugs. Thus, random drugs without proper clinical trial, need to be avoided\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/epaper.thehindu.com\/Home\/ShareArticle?OrgId=GO88FRT22.1&amp;imageview=0\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">click here<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synopsis: Clinical Trials have been instrumental in the development of treatment for Covid-19 so far. Introduction The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on March 11, 2020. Doctors did not know how to treat patients with COVID-19 in the beginning. Clinical care was dominated by opinion, narratives, and code of belief in the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/importance-of-clinical-trials-in-covid-19-treatment\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Importance of Clinical Trials in COVID-19 Treatment<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230],"tags":[1315,1289],"class_list":["post-101619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","tag-st_1","tag-soc_0","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704917258},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}