Medical approaches for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)
Citation: Morra ME, Van Thanh L, Kamel MG, et al. Clinical outcomes of current medical approaches for Middle East respiratory syndrome: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Reviews in Medical Virology 2018; 28: e1977
What is this? Like COVID-19, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is an acute respiratory disease caused by a coronavirus. Some of the drugs given to patients with MERS are being considered for the treatment of patients with COVID-19.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for research evaluating the treatment of patients with MERS. They restricted their search to articles published after 1 January 2012 but did not restrict by language of publication. They did their search in June 2015. They identified 10 case reports, 4 observational studies and 2 case series.
What works: The combination of ribavirin and interferon might be effective for the treatment of MERS, if given promptly and with monitoring of adverse events.
What doesn’t work: Corticosteroids did not show benefits on survival of patients with MERS.
Interferon did not show benefits on mortality rate or duration of survival for patients with MERS.
What’s uncertain: Nothing noted.
We’ve already reached tens of thousands of people with plain language summaries of systematic reviews. If you’d like to help us to continue our work, please consider a donation.
Donate with PayPal
You can also donate through the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) here. If you are based in the USA and want to make a tax-deductable donation, please donate to Evidence Aid via the British Schools and Universities Foundation.