Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Sept.24: Covid-19 patients at high risk of hospitalisation or with severe disease should be treated with a combination of two antibodies, according to the new World Health Organization guidelines.
For two particular types of Covid-19 patients, the WHO Guideline Development Group (GDG) panel has recommended treatment with casirivimab and imdevimab. The first group consists of patients with non-severe Covid-19 who are at the highest risk of hospitalisation, and the second group has those with severe or critical Covid-19 who are seronegative, meaning they have not mounted their own Covid-19 antibody response.
The first recommendation is based on fresh evidence from three unpublished trials. Casirivimab and imdevimab were found to lower the likelihood of hospitalisation and the length of symptoms in patients at the highest risk of severe disease, such as those who were not vaccinated, were older, or were immunosuppressed.
The second recommendation is based on findings from a different study, which show that the two antibodies minimise mortality and the requirement for mechanical ventilation in seronegative individuals.
Treatment with Casirivimab and imdevimab resulted in 49 fewer deaths per 1,000 in seriously ill patients and 87 fewer deaths in critically ill patients, according to this study.
The panel concluded that any benefits of this antibody treatment for other COVID-19 patients are unlikely to be significant. They also observed that this treatment had numerous financial and resource implications, which could make it difficult for low- and middle-income countries to obtain it.
