Ensayos clínicos de reposicionamiento de medicamentos para el tratamiento de la COVID-19 Ensaios clínicos de reposicionamento de medicamentos para o tratamento do COVID-19

摘要

The World Health Organization (WHO) was informed on December 2019 about a coronavirus pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province (China). Subsequently, on March 12, 2020, 125,048 cases and 4,614 deathswere reported. Coronavirus is an enveloped RNA virus, from the genus Betacoronavirus, that is distributedin birds, humans, and other mammals. WHO has named the novel coronavirus disease as COVID-19. Morethan 80 clinical trials have been launched to test coronavirus treatment, including some drug repurposing orrepositioning for COVID-19. Hence, we performed a search in March 2020 of the clinicaltrials.gov database.The eligibility criteria for the retrieved studies were: contain a clinicaltrials.gov base identifier number; describethe number of participants and the period for the study; describe the participants' clinical conditions; andutilize interventions with medicines already studied or approved for any other disease in patients infected withthe novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (2019-nCoV). It is essential to emphasize that this article only capturedtrials listed in the clinicaltrials.gov database. We identified 24 clinical trials, involving more than 20 medicines,such as human immunoglobulin, interferons, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, arbidol, remdesivir, favipiravir,lopinavir, ritonavir, oseltamivir, methylprednisolone, bevacizumab, and traditional Chinese medicines (TCM).Although drug repurposing has some limitations, repositioning clinical trials may represent an attractive strategy because they facilitate the discovery of new classes of medicines; they have lower costs and take lesstime to reach the market; and there are existing pharmaceutical supply chains for formulation and distribution.