EFFECTIVENESS OF MOLNUPIRAVIR IN THE TREATMENT OF PATIENTS WITH COVID-19: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS

Background & Aims:

Molnupiravir is an oral antiviral drug which is used in the treatment of patients with COVID-19. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and safety of molnupiravir in the treatment of patients with COVID-19.

Materials & Methods:

A systematic search was conducted in PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Trip database from 2019 to 2022. In addition, a manual search was performed in the sources of primary review and key studies. No restrictions were considered for the language of the studies. Evaluation of the quality of studies was done with Jadad and Newcastle scoring systems. Data analysis was performed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis version 3 software.

Ten studies with total population of 24221 patients were included in the study. The results of the meta-analysis showed that the risk ratio (RR) between the two groups of molnupiravir and control for the outcome of the mortality rate was 0.67 (0.30-1.49) (P=0.33), for the hospitalization rate was 1.40 (2.50-0.78) (P=0.26), for hospitalization or death was 1.09 (2.69-0.44) (P=0.85), for mechanical ventilation was 0.61 (1.33-0.12) (P=0.11), and for side effects was 0.93 (0.82-1.06) (P=0.29); the difference between means for these outcomes were not significant.

The findings of this study showed that molnupiravir has no effect on reducing mortality rate, hospitalization rate, hospitalization or death, and mechanical ventilation of the patients, although it was safe in the patients.