Drug Updates: October

Ronapreve, a combination of two monoclonal antibodies, is the first targeted medicine developed for COVID-19 to receive marketing authorisation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for use in the UK and will now be available to treat thousands of hospitalised COVID-19 patients in the UK.

The medication will be available to those aged 50 years and over or those who are 12−49 and considered immunocompromised.

To qualify for the drug, antibody testing will first be used to determine whether COVID-19 patients are seronegative, and the treatment antibodies – casirivimab and imdevimab—will then be administered to eligible patients via a drip.

Clinical guidance is expected to be sent out to clinicians so they can begin prescribing the treatment as soon as possible.

The government has put forward that they will be taking action to prevent medicines from being unnecessarily prescribed in England, following a new government-commissioned review was published. The review estimated that 10% of dispensed items in primary care are overprescribed, with 15% of people taking five or more medicines a day. It also reported that one in five admissions to hospital in over 65-year-olds is caused by adverse medicine effects.