Data on compounding lopinavir and ritonavir suspension for non-cooperative COVID-19 patients

The COVID-19 outbreak is now one of the most critical crises to manage for most of the national healthcare systems in the world. The situation has been complicated by the absence of a vaccine and authorised pharmacological treatments, except for remdesivir. In this context, many medicaments, including different Ebola or HIV antivirals, are used off-label in the hospital wards as life-treating medicines for COVID-19 patients. Authorized medicaments manipulation is sometimes necessary because they are not always formulated to be administered to non-cooperative patients or they are in shortage. It is this the case of the fixed combination of lopinavir/ritonavir, which was extensively used in the first phase of the outbreak inducing a shortage of the oral solution available in the EU market as an oral liquid solution and. Unfortunately, the increased worldwide demand and the reduced goods movements are causing the shortage of the liquid solution. This work provides data on size distribution, osmolarity other than drug chemical stability of a lopinavir/ritonavir extemporaneous preparation prepared by using as drug source the solid dosage form (i.e., tablet) available on the market. The reported data indicate that such preparation is suitable to be delivered through a nasogastric tube, and enough stable for two weeks from the preparation at room temperature.