(Reuters) – People with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who were treated with a monoclonal antibody “cocktail” had lower hospitalization rates than similar people who did not receive the treatment, researchers reported in EClinicalMedicine.

They looked at nearly 1,400 such patients, roughly half of whom had received Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc’s casirivimab–imdevimab monoclonal antibody therapy. Among those who received the treatment, about 45% were older than 65, and many had high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, lung disease and other risk factors.

By four weeks after the treatment, 1.6% of them had been hospitalized, compared to 4.8% of patients not treated with the monoclonal antibodies.

The study was not randomized and cannot prove the treatment caused the better outcomes.

However, the study “suggests that when patients who are at high risk due to a range of comorbidities contract a mild or moderate case of COVID-19, this combination of monoclonal injections gives them a chance of a nonhospitalized recovery,” study leader Dr. Raymund Razonable of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in a statement.

SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2Vsy7HK EClinicalMedicine, online August 30, 2021.

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