Emerging Antiviral Drugs to Prevent or Treat Influenza

Key Message

What Is the Issue?

• There is a need to identify drugs currently in development (pipeline drugs) intended to prevent or treat influenza.
• Specifically, policy-makers would like to identify those drugs that have ongoing or recently completed phase II or phase III randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and are not yet approved for use by Health Canada for influenza.

What Did We Do?

• An information specialist did a tailored literature search across major databases to identify relevant RCTs on antiviral drugs for influenza, focusing on information published in English since January 1, 2020, and completed on November 8, 2024.

What Did We Find?

• We identified a total of 17 emerging drugs in 26 completed or ongoing RCTs, mainly testing treatments for adults with uncomplicated influenza, with some studies including children and adolescents.
• The evidence included 2 prevention studies and 3 challenge studies for influenza.
• Most drugs were compared to a placebo and the number of participants in these trials ranged from 46 to 5,000.

What Does It Mean?

• There are promising new drugs in development for treating adults with uncomplicated influenza.