The Effect of Proposed Drugs in the Treatment of Patients with COVID- 19: A Systematic Review

Background: No proven effective treatment for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) currently exist. Different drugs have different effects on patients with Covid-19, and the potential benefits or harms of the proposed drugs for the treatment of this disease need to be discussed more fully. The aim of this study was to systematically review the effectiveness of the proposed drugs in the treatment of patients with Covid-19. The present study is a systematic review that used SID, PubMed, Web Science, EMBASE, Scopus, and Science direct, Google Scholar, JAMA, WHO and CDC databases to access related articles. In order to search for articles, only English articles with the keywords Covid19, treatment, Remdesivir, Hydroxychloroquine, Ritonavir, Tocilizumab and all possible combinations of these words during 2019 and 2020 were examined. Out of 250 papers obtained, 20 papers had initial conditions and finally 9 clinical trial papers related to Covid-19 treatments were reviewed. Initial studies on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine (with and without macrolides) were found to be effective in the treatment of Covid-19 patients, but further studies have shown that these drugs do not have a positive effect on Covid-19. Also, the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in patients led to an increase in their mortality. There were different results for lopinavir and ritonavir, some of which showed improvement in symptoms and in others exacerbation of symptoms and complications. Remdesivir causes side effects such as nausea, constipation, hypokalemia, hypotension and elevated liver enzymes. Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine have no effect on the recovery of patients with Covid-19. The positive or negative effect of lopinavir / ritonavir requires clinical trials and research. Remdesivir improves patients with Covid-19. It is recommended that caregivers and medical and nursing staff closely monitor patients receiving remdesivir for drug side effects.