Efficacy and Safety of Arbidol in Treatment of Patients with COVID-19 Infection: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Background: The outbreak of COVID-19has led to a high demand for finding effective antiviral agents. Preliminary experiments showed that Umifenovir could inhibit coronavirus replication in vivo. There is limited data on the clinical efficacy of COVID-19-infected pneumonia. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate this medication based on clinical findings.Methods: The present study was designed as a clinical trial to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of this medicine compared to empirical treatment. For this purpose, multi-stage sampling was considered. 56 people who have mild to moderate symptoms without signs of sever pneumonia , were selected by accidental non-random sampling method. This sample size was subsequently divided into two groups (group A threated with hydroxycloroquine and group B who threated with combination hydroxycloroquine and Umifenovir) by randomized block sampling (1:1). During the study, three patients left the case group. Their clinical sighns and symptoms were evaluated on 3 th and 7 th and 14 th days after oncet illness while taking these medicines in the disease course. The SPSS software was used for data analysis and the significance level was considered to be PResults: On the seventh days after visit patients , there were statistically significant differences in recuperation dry cough(p = 0.001), weakness(p = 0.004), gastrointestinal symptoms(p = 0.043) and shortness of breath (p = 0.001) between the two groups, so that in patients who under orescription combination HCQ and Umifenovir group had a faster recovery.Generally during illness , there were statistically significantly faster melioratation myalgia(p = 0.03), gastrointestinal symptoms(p = 0.047), and weakness(p = 0.007)in patients who threated with both HCQ and Umifenovir .Conclusion: Evaluation clinical findings in mild to moderate COVID-19 patients symptoms and sighns recuperation faster in group who under orescription combination HCQ and Umifenovir .regimen. In other words, adding Umifenovir to the empirical treatment accelerated the recovery process of patients’ clinical symptoms.Registration: IR.TUMS.VCR.REC.1399.204, 04.13.2020 , http://ethics.research.ac.ir/IR.TUMS.VCR.REC.1399.204