COVID-19 treatment in patients with comorbidities: Awareness of
drug-drug interactions.
Abstract
In a recent issue of Br J Clin Pharmacol Smith et al1 published an
outstanding commentary titled ‘Dosing will be a key success factor in
repurposing antivirals for Covid-19’. They highlighted that the success
in our repurposing efforts will be dependent on ‘getting the dose right’
for drugs which have been developed for different indications and
stressed some of the unique challenges of treating this particular
disease. They pointed the reader to lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) as an
example of a repurposed antiviral and the limited experience of this
drug regimen (and other treatments) in the elderly population with
comorbidities – ie those most at risk from Covid-19. It is on the issue
of comorbidities, polypharmacy and drug-drug interactions (DDIs) that we
wish to comment.