Introduction
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It was characterized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020 [1]. Although the disease is not severe in most patients [2], it may progress to a serious illness and hospitalization particularly in the elderly and those with underlying medical problems like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, and cancer [3].
There is not yet any approved drug or vaccine to treat COVID-19 and treatment is principally supportive [4]. However, medications approved for other viral diseases such as Ebola, HIV and influenza are being experimentally applied against COVID-19 [5, 6]. The WHO recommends to include confirmed cases of COVD-19 to a global clinical trial (SOLIDARITY) in which patients receive standard care or one of four recommended treatments. The treatment arms in SOLIDARITY are remdesivir, chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir, or lopinavir/ritonavir plus interferon beta-1a [7]. These regimens specifically those which include HIV protease inhibitors, may have complex drug-drug interactions (DDIs).
Besides WHO-recommended treatments, some other medications are being investigated as probable effective therapies against COVID-19. It is estimated that as many as 800 clinical trials are being planned or performed worldwide [5]. Meanwhile the scientists and clinicians are evaluating different therapies in order to discover the most effective treatments for COVID-19, they should also consider developing data on potential adverse effects and DDIs [8]. Because the medications for management of the wide spectrum of clinical symptoms of COVID-19 and/or underlying medical comorbidities may interact with the main treatments [9]. Some charts have been developed to predict drug interactions between experimental COVID-19 therapies and other medications [10]. However, data on potential DDIs (pDDIs) in COVID-19 patients in real practice is not available. We designed current study to investigate pDDIs and their predictors in hospitalized COVID-19 patients by reviewing their medical charts.