Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus.
1. Pharmacokinetics of Lopinavir and Ritonavir in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19
COVID-19 has rapidly spread around the world, and the lack of effective treatment has fueled a global search for the "magic bullet" against the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Lopinavir and ritonavir, a drug combination currently approved as retroviral therapy for adults with HIV-1 infection, is one of the treatments being investigated and is the subject of more than 30 studies registered at ClinicalTrials.gov. Researchers from the Medical University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna in Vienna, Austria, report trough plasma concentrations of lopinavir and ritonavir from 8 patients with COVID-19 admitted to the hospital for "normal care." Their findings suggest that current dosing of this drug combo is unlikely to be effective for treating patients with COVID-19. Read the full text: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M20-1550.
Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. The lead author, Bernd Jilma, MD, can be reached directly at Bernd.jilma@meduniwien.ac.at.
2. Cytokine Levels in the Body Fluids of a Patient With COVID-19 and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome: A Case Report
Some patients with COVID-19 progress rapidly to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), septic shock, and multiple organ failure. Some experts attribute this sequence of events to a large increase in cytokines (cytokine storm) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or a secondary infection by another organism. Researchers from The First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University; Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China report cytokine levels in multiple body fluids from a patient with COVID-19 and ARDS, septic shock, and multiple organ failure. Read the full text: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/L20-0234.
Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. Author Kaijiang Yu, PhD can be reached at drkaijiang@163.com and Ming-Yan Zhao, MD, can be reached at mingyan0927@126.com.
###
Journal
Annals of Internal Medicine