4.1 LPV/r alone for the treatment of COVID-19 infection
The simulation of LPV/r at the dose of 400/100 mg twice-daily dose (currently used to treat COVID-19) may not be an optimal dose regimen due to insufficient unbound Ctrough at 24 hours (figure 1(regimen A)). The 800/200 mg LPV/r once-daily dose may be a better option to ensure the unbound Ctrough at 24 hours above 0ยท04 mg l-1 (figure 1 (regimen B)).4This may explain the recovery rate of less than 20% of the currently used 400/100 mg twice-daily dose LPV/r even when used in combination with other antiretroviral drugs (Chen et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2020). The successful treatment reported in some patients (Chen et al., 2020) treated with 400/100 mg twice-daily dose LPV/r could be explained by a relatively higher sensitivity of the COVID-19 to lopinavir compared with SARS-CoV.