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Coronavirus treatments and vaccines 3:21
(CNN) - Hospitals in New York are giving heartburn medications to covid-19 patients to see if they help fight the virus, according to the doctor who started the trial.
Preliminary results from the clinical trial of famotidine, the active ingredient in Pepcid, may appear in the coming weeks, said Dr. Kevin Tracey, president of the Feinstein Institutes of Medical Research at Northwell Health, which runs 23 hospitals in New York City. York.
So far, 187 patients have enrolled in the clinical trial, and Northwell ultimately hopes to enroll 1,200, he said.
"There are many examples in the history of medicine where a drug designed for one purpose turns out to have an effect on another disease," said Tracey.
He said that if famotidine works, and that's very important at the moment, it would be easy to use it on a large scale.
"It is generic, abundant and inexpensive," he said.
But he stressed that it might not work.
"We don't know if it has any benefit. Not really. I swear not, "he said. "People expect something. But we have to do this clinical trial. "
He also stressed that the patients in the study are in the hospital taking megadoses intravenously, doses about nine times more than someone would normally take for heartburn.
"You shouldn't go to the pharmacy and take a lot of heartburn medication," he said.
READ : The medical trial of the antiviral remdesivir, to treat the coronavirus, was not "conclusive", says the company that makes the drug
Learning from Chinese patients' medications
Tracey and colleagues came up with the idea of studying famotidine after it was observed that some patients in China taking the drug fared better than patients who did not.
He said studies on Chinese patients have yet to be published, but that Dr. Michael Callahan, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital who worked with coronavirus patients in China, noted that some people with lower incomes survived by longer than their wealthier counterparts who also had heartburn.
When Callahan and Chinese doctors looked closer, they found that many of the lowest-income people were taking famotidine, while the wealthiest patients tended to take a different and more expensive medication.
"Poor farmers really seemed to do well on famotidine," said Tracey. "There are many anecdotes that give us some hope."
Callahan could not be reached for comment.
The famotidine study was first reported in the journal Science .
Tracey said that in addition to observation in Chinese patients, Florida-based Alchem Laboratories used a computer model to make a list of existing drugs that could fight the coronavirus, and famotidine appeared near the top of the list.
He said that is because, in theory, famotidine's structure is such that it could stop virus replication, in the same way that protease inhibitors, which are used to treat HIV, stop that virus.
Concerns about famotidine shortage
In the Northwell trial, all patients are taking hydroxychloroquine.
Tracey said that when the study began in early April, doctors and patients insisted on using hydroxychloroquine and, in fact, it became the standard of care.
President Trump has frequently touted the drug as a "turning point" in the fight against the virus, though recent studies have suggested it doesn't help.
LOOK : Hydroxychloroquine has no benefit for covid-19 patients, study finds
"You must be fair to people: they are reading the newspaper and listening to the news that hydroxychloroquine works and they look at their wife or grandmother or dying son and want to try it and how can we say no? What kind of person would say no? ”Tracey said.
Half of the patients in the study will receive famotidine in addition to hydroxychloroquine. The other half will receive intravenous saline as a placebo, which has no effect.
Hydroxychloroquine may not be used in the study in the future, as last week, the US Food and Drug Administration. USA (FDA) warned against its use for coronavirus due to possible side effects.
Tracey said the independent board that monitors the trial will make the decision on whether to continue to include hydroxychloroquine in the study.
He added that Northwell has kept the study quiet until now due to experience with doctors who were quick to put patients on hydroxychloroquine. You don't want that same IV famotidine fever: It's not clear if it works, and if there's a fever for the medicine, your research team may not have enough for your study subjects.
He is also concerned that people without heartburn run to stores to buy famotidine pills, mistakenly convinced that it will help them against the coronavirus.
That could leave heartburn patients in the lurch, especially since the FDA recalled Zantac, a different heartburn medication, from the market earlier this month due to possible contamination.
He said these are unusual concerns at an unusual time.
“That is the reality of trying to do the right thing in a pandemic. It is very, very difficult, ”he said.
CNN's Wes Bruer contributed to this report.
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