Clinical Trials on COVID-19: What is Being Researched in the United States?

Abstract

The emergence of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in late 2019 has brought great challenges to public health worldwide and, to date, there is no specific approved therapeutic protocol. Therefore, this chapter will analyze types of intervention for use in patients with COVID-19 developed by American researchers from records made on the Clinical Trials platform. For the search strategy, keywords “COVID-19” in the “Condition or Disease” section and “United States” in the “Country” section were used. No filters were applied. Data were descriptively analyzed. In total, 1,182 studies were obtained, of which 496 met the eligibility criteria. Sample size ranged from 1 to 10,000 participants. Most studies involved the age group of 18–64 years (48.6%). As for design, randomized type (80.5%), parallel (75.6%), open designs (38.7%) and those with therapeutic purpose (88.3%) were more frequent. Most clinical trials used the two-arm trial (67.3%), researched drugs (64.8%), used placebo (55.2%) and were sponsored by pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies (35.4%). Clinical trials developed by American researchers on COVID-19 involve adult and elderly participants, with predominance of randomized, parallel and open design, for therapeutic purposes and mostly evaluated immunosuppressants or combinations of antivirals/immunosuppressants. The drugs and biological products Remdesivir, Baricitinib in combination with Remdesivir, Bamlanivimab and Etesevimab, REGEN-COV and COVID-19 convalescent plasma were also used, authorized for emergency use.