Treatment with Arbidol and Moxifloxacin in Ordinary and Severe Adult Patients Infected with COVID-19

  1. Wen-Na Xi
  2. Di Jin
  3. Ke Sun
  4. Rong-Yan Yu
  5. Xue-Bing Yao
  6. Biao-Shu Zou
  7. Zhi-Ying Song
  8. AO-Yu Yang
  9. Rui-Xia Luo
  10. Yun liu
  11. Yan-hua Li
  12. Shui-Lin Sun
  13. Dong-Shan Yu

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Abstract

Background

An outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been widely spread. We aim to investigate the therapeutic effect of arbidol and moxifloxacin in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Methods

We collected and analyzed data on 94 patients with COVID-19 including 27 severe patients at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and 74 ordinary patients at general isolation ward in Wuhan Xiehe Hospital, from February 15, 2020 to March 15, 2020. All patients were treated with arbidol (100mg each time, three times a day for 14 days) and moxifloxacin (0.4g each time, once a day for 7-14 days). Other data was also collected including demographic data, symptoms, laboratory findings, treatments and clinical outcomes.

Results

In basic characteristics, compared with the ordinary patients, the severe patients were older (median age was 63.0 years V.S 57.0 years, p =0.03), had higher proportion of hypertension (30% V.S 9%, p =0.03), higher possibility of getting fatigue and/or myalgia (26% V.S 6%, p =0.03), and had more obvious dyspnea symptom (26% V.S 3%, p =0.006). In regarding to laboratory results, we found the severe patients have higher white blood cell counts (p=0.003), neutrophil counts (p=0.007), higher levels of D-dimer ( p <0.001), ALT ( p <0.001) and AST (p=0.013) than the ordinary patients. After treatment of arbidol and moxifloxacin for one week, the rates of SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid turning negative were 69.2% in the severe group and 77.8% in the ordinary group. A peculiar phenomenon was that IL-6 stands out among the cytokines in both groups, and higher in severe group than the ordinary one (p=0.011). After treating with arbidol and moxifloxacin for one week, IL-6 decreased significantly in severe group (p=0.023).

Conclusion

In summary, we proved the treatment of arbidol and moxifloxacin could be helpful in reducing viral load and inflammation during SARS-CoV2 infection, especially for negatively regulating fatal inflammation in severe COVID-19 patients. However, more evidence awaits further clinical verification.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.30.20117598: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    IgM and IgG antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were measured by SARS-CoV-2 IgG/IgM antibody test kit (C86095G/C86095M, YHLO biotech, Shenzhen) according to the protocol.
    IgM
    suggested: None
    SARS-CoV-2
    suggested: None
    SARS-CoV-2 IgG/IgM
    suggested: None
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All analyses were performed with Graphpad Prism 5 (GraphPad Software, UK).
    Graphpad Prism
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)
    GraphPad
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.30.20117598v1 on medRxiv