Eli Lilly's monoclonal antibody therapy bebtelovimab is a reliable treatment for patients infected by BA.2 or other omicron subvaraints, new research from Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic shows.
For the study, published Aug. 15 in Journal of Infectious Diseases, researchers compared the outcomes of 2,833 high-risk COVID-19 patients treated with bebtelovimab and 774 patients treated with Pfizer's antiviral Paxlovid.
Just 1.4 percent of patients taking bebtelovimab developed serious illness within 30 days, a comparable rate to Paxlovid and other monoclonal antibody treatments used before BA.2 gained dominance in the U.S. earlier this year. This finding is significant, as bebtelovimab was cleared for emergency use in February based on limited data as an alternative therapy for high-risk patients who couldn't take remdesivir or Paxlovid.
"This study gives us confidence that bebtelovimab is reliable for the treatment of high-risk patients during this omicron epoch characterized by increasingly new variants, and gives us another tool in the effort against COVID-19," lead study author Raymund Razonable, MD, an infectious diseases specialist and researcher at Mayo Clinic, said in a news release.