Treatments administered to the first 9,152 reported cases of COVID19: a systematic review

Abstract

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2/2019 novel coronavirus (COVID19) has created a global pandemic with no approved treatments or vaccines. Many treatments have already been administered to COVID19 patients but have not been systematically evaluated. We performed a systematic literature review to identify all treatments reported to be administered to COVID19 patients and assess time to clinically meaningful response for treatments with sufficient data. We searched PubMed, BioRxiv, MedRxiv, and ChinaXiv for articles reporting treatments for COVID19 patients published between 12/1/2019-3/27/2020. Data were analyzed descriptively. Of the 2,706 articles identified, 155 studies met inclusion criteria, comprising 9,152 patients from 14 different countries. The cohort was 45.4% female and 98.3% hospitalized and mean (SD) age was 44.4 years (SD 21.0). The most frequently administered drug classes were antivirals, antibiotics, and corticosteroids, and of the 115 reported drugs, the most frequently administered was combination lopinavir/ritonavir, which was associated with a time to clinically-meaningful response (complete symptom resolution or hospital discharge) of 11.7 (1.09) days. There was insufficient data to compare across treatments. A large number of treatments have been administered to the first 9,152 reported cases of COVID19. These data serve as the basis for an open-source registry of all reported treatments given to COVID19 patients. Further work is needed to prioritize drugs for investigation in well-controlled clinical trials and treatment protocols.