The therapeutic effect and safety of the drugs for COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background:Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread almost all regions of the world and caused great loss to the whole body of mankind. Thus, numerous clinical trials were conducted to find specific medicine for COVID-19 recently. However, it remains unanswered whether they are beneficial.Objective:This study aimed to evaluate the efficiency and safety of the COVID-19 medicine.Methods:Studies were determined through searching PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Medline. The studies of COVID-19 medicine were involved with eligible end points containing mortality, discharge rate, rate of clinical improvement, and rate of serious adverse events.Results:A total of 33 studies involving 37,879 patients were included in our study, whose intervening measures contained three major types of COVID-19 medicine, ACEI/ARB, antiviral medicine, and chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine. Compared to control group, COVID-19 drugs have no distinct effect on mortality (RR, 0.93; 95% CI, 0.79-1.11, P = .43) and discharge rate (RR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.98-1.14, P = .13). However, antiviral medicine presents the obvious advantage in clinical improvement (RR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.01-1.23, P < .05). In addition, the serious adverse events rate (RR, 0.75; 95% CI, 0.63-0.88, P