Laboratory tests done by researchers in Norway and Estonia have found that six of the existing antivirals worked against the coronavirus. They also found that two them when combined showed greater effect.
The six drugs were nelfinavir, salinomycin, amodiaquine, obatoclax, emetine and homoharringtonine.
“This is exciting new data from the work we did,” said Magnar Bjørås, a professor in the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Department of Clinical and Molecular Medicine, and one of the paper’s co-authors.
While analysing the non-drug treatment, they found that the use of antibody-laden plasma from recovered patients to treat the severely ill — may only work if the donor has recently recovered from COVID-19.
According to the researchers, a combination of nelfinar and amodiaquine “exhibited the highest synergy.”
“The conclusion so far is that clinicians need to collect plasma for treatment purposes as soon as patients recover from COVID-19,” Nordbø said, because the amounts of antibodies decline with time.
