Researchers at the Montreal Heart Institute reported that a medicine used against gout It shows efficacy to treat patients with the by reducing mortality by 44% and hospitalizations by 25% after analyzing the results of a study with 4,488 patients worldwide.
The drug, called in Spanish colchicine or colchicine, It is a drug that, in addition to fighting gout, can be used against arthritis and cirrhosis, and has demonstrated its ability to reduce cytokine levels and the activation of macrophages, neutrophils, and inflammasomes.
According to researchers from the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI), their clinical study “has shown that the use of colchicine was associated with statistically significant reductions in the risk of death and hospitalization compared with placebo.”
“In those patients with a proven diagnosis of COVID-19, Colchicine reduced hospitalizations by 25%, the need for mechanical ventilation by 50%, and deaths by 44%. This major scientific discovery makes colchicine the world’s first oral medication that can be used to treat non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19,” the authors added.
Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif, director of the MHI Research Center and principal investigator of the study, said in a statement, “Our study shows the efficacy of colchicine treatment in preventing the ‘cytokine storm’ phenomenon and reducing associated complications. with covid-19”.
The study, called Colcorona, was carried out with 4,488 patients from Canada, the United States, Europe, South America and South Africa, and used a non-contact, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled system designed to determine whether colchicine “could reduce the risk of serious complications associated with covid-19.”
The researchers added that it is the largest study in the world in which an orally administered drug has been tested in COVID-19 patients who have not been hospitalized.
For the authors, “treat patients at risk of complications with colchicine as soon as the diagnosis of COVID-19 is confirmed by a PRC test rreduces the risk of developing a serious disease form and, consequently, reduces the number of hospitalizations”, so prescribing this drug “could alleviate the problems of hospital congestion and reduce healthcare costs”.