Early Onset Favipiravir Saves Lives
Ercan Karatas, Lacin Aksoy, Pinar Elbir Kilic, Arzu Dogru, Ersin Ozaslan
doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-142868/v1
Background Favipiravir, an antiviral recommended for use in patients with tachypnea (respiratory rate 30 / min) in COVID-19 pneumonia, with SpO2 level below 90% in room air and with bilateral diffuse pneumonia on chest X-ray or tomography, or patients with treatment-resistant fever, is a new type of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) inhibitor. After the administration of Favipiravir, it contributed signi cantly to reducing mortality in patients with severe COVID-19 positive disease. We performed this study to determine the start time in Favipiravir's covid pneumonia.
Material and Method: We evaluated the effect of a total of 5 days of oral treatment as a 2 × 1600 mg loading dose and a 2 × 600 mg maintenance dose of Favipiravir added to the standard COVID-19 treatment received by patients with laboratory-radiology-clinical ndings who have advanced or severe COVID 19 pneumonia.
Results 180 patients hospitalized at Tuzla State Hospital and given Favipiravir treatment between 20/3/2020 and 30/5/2020 were examined. As of hospitalization, 17 of 101 patients (17%) who were given Favipiravir treatment in ≤ 3 days died, 30 of 79 patients (38%) who were given Favipiravir treatment for in > 3 days died (p:0.002). 33 of 47 patients (70%) who died were > 65 years old. Only 5 of the 47 (11%) patients who died had no comorbid disease. 35 had two or more comorbid diseases.
Conclusion
Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests Authors' contributions EK,LA conceived this review; EK,LA,EÖ performed the literature review and wrote the paper; PEK,AD helped with the review and writing of the paper; all authors read and approved the nal manuscript.
Authors' information Ercan Karatas
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