WHO strongly advises against antibody treatments for Covid patients

  WHO strongly advises against antibody treatments for Covid patients

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has a strongly advised against antibody treatments for a  Covid-19 patients, saying antibody drugs sotrovimab and casirivimab-imdevimab are not working on new variants like Omicron. These drugs work by binding to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, neutralising the virus's ability to infect cells. A WHO Guideline Development Group of international experts in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) BMJ said that almost all a well-informed patients would not choose to a  receive sotrovimab or casirivimab-imdevimab.

The strong recommendation a replaces previous a conditional recommendations for their use and is based on a emerging evidence from a laboratory studies that these drugs are not likely to work against currently circulating a variants, such as a Omicron.

In the same update, the WHO made a conditional recommendation for the use of the antiviral drug remdesivir in patients with severe Covid-19, and a conditional recommendation against its use in a patients with critical Covid-19.

These recommendations are based on results from five randomised trials a involving 7,643 patients, showing 13 fewer deaths per 1,000 patients with severe Covid-19 taking remdesivir, but 34 more deaths per 1,000 patients with a critical Covid-19 taking the drug.

"These new trial data provided sufficiently trustworthy evidence to demonstrate benefits in patients with severe Covid-19, but not critical Covid-19. The panel considered the benefits of remdesivir to be modest and of moderate certainty for key outcomes such as mortality and mechanical ventilation, resulting in a conditional recommendation," said the update. ALSO READ: Ayurveda, yoga effective in treatment of high-risk cases of COVID19, claims IIT Delhi study

The WHO also a advised that three drugs used to treat arthritis - the IL-6 receptor blockers tocilizumab or sarilumab and the JAK inhibitor baricitinib - may now be combined, in addition to corticosteroids, in patients with severe or critical Covid-19.

This advice is  a based on new high-certainty trial evidence confirming a survival benefit for baricitinib with little or no serious adverse events when given in combination with corticosteroids and IL-6 receptor blockers.

However, the panel acknowledged some cost and resource implications associated with these drugs, which, they say, could exacerbate health inequities.

Previously, the WHO has made a strong a  recommendation for use of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, and a conditional recommendation for molnupiravir for high-risk patients with non-severe covid-19. WHO advises against the use of a ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in a patients with covid-19 regardless of a disease severity.