Global health authorities have issued “strong” recommendations against the use of two antibody therapies in patients with COVID-19, reversing previous conditional recommendations that endorsed their use.
The recommendation against the use of two therapies—sotrovimab and casirivimab-imdevimab—came as part of an update to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) so-called “living guideline” on COVID-19 drugs, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
The two drugs, which were developed early in the pandemic, work by binding to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and neutralizing the ability of the virus to infect cells. However, recent evidence shows that sotrovimab and casirivimab-imdevimab are unlikely to be effective against currently spreading COVID-19 variants….