Three promising treatments for COVID-19: not a cure, but progress

We still don't have a cure, but each of these treatments could save your life.

Among the thousands of scientific studies already published about coronavirus and COVID-19, a few rays of hope have appeared. We don't have a cure yet, but at least three treatments seem to slow the virus down and save some people from the worst effects. Until we get a vaccine, these might be the best we can hope for.

Here are the three treatments that have shown the most promise, from what I've read.

1. Dexamethasone. The latest news is about dexamethasone, a widely available steroid that has been used safely in people for many years. Just a week ago, Oxford University announced results from a large study in which they gave dexamethasone to 2104 patients and compared those patients to 4321 others who received standard care. The results were striking: dexamethasone reduced deaths by 35% in patients on ventilators, and by 20% in patients who needed supplemental oxygen. 

In the announcement from Oxford, Prof. Peter Horby, one of the lead investigators of the new study, said

"the survival benefit is clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen... Dexamethasone is inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save lives worldwide."

This was the best news we've had since the pandemic started. We finally have a drug that is cheap, easy to administer, and actually reduces mortality in very sick patients. 

2. Famotidine is a common, inexpensive heartburn medicine sold over-the-counter as Pepcid AC. In a very preliminary study examining the outcome of patients who took famotidine around the time of hospital admission, released in early May, doctors at Columbia University, in collaboration with New York's Northwell Health and Cold Spring Harbor Lab, compared patients on famotidine to other patients who were all very ill. The study was small and not well-controlled, so we have to be very cautious about jumping to conclusions on this one. Nonetheless, the results were promising: the number of patients in this study who either died or needed a ventilator dropped from 22% to 10% with famotidine. 

The mechanism by which famotidine might work isn't yet understood, but at least it is plausible, as Derek Lowe explains here. Northwell Health is conducting a larger, controlled study, and we should know soon if the results hold up., and we should know soon if the results hold up.

3. Alpha blockers. I wrote about these in early April: alpha blockers are another common, widely available drug (one version is called Prazosin) that has been used safely by millions of men to treat enlarged prostates. A preliminary, retrospective study showed that alpha blockers can slow down the "cytokine storm" that many patients suffer in severe coronavirus cases. 

To be more specific, patients who were already taking alpha blockers seemed to have a 22% lower risk of dying from infections that caused acute respiratory distress (ARD). This is not COVID, but the investigators used a large database with over 13,000 patients who had ARD in the past. A group of my colleagues at Johns Hopkins Medicine, led by Maximilian Konig and Bert Vogelstein, are now conducting a clinical trial to see if alpha blockers work equally well in COVID-19 patients.

All three of these treatments seem to have something in common: they slow down the body's hyper-stimulated immune response to the virus. None of them actually kill the virus, as a true anti-viral would do, but many people who are dying are suffering from their own immune system's too-aggressive attack on the virus.

Notice that I'm not including two drugs that have received a huge amount of press lately: remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine. Remdesivir has shown some promising results, but even in the results announced by its own manufacturer, Gilead, the benefits were very modest. A study published a month ago in NEJM showed that patients on remdesivir recovered from COVID-19 four days sooner (11 days rather than 15), and had slightly lower mortality, but those results were described as preliminary. Unlike the other drugs I'm excited about, remdesivir is very new, expensive, and not widely available. 

Hydroxychloroquine, by contrast, has been a total failure, as I described just a month ago. The primary reason it has gotten so much attention was, first, that it was heavily promoted by a French scientist, Didier Raoult, based on a small, very poorly-run study that he published in March; and second, that it was latched onto and promoted by Donald Trump. Since then, several larger, much better run studies have shown either that hydroxychloroquine has no benefit or, worse, that it causes harm, in the form of heart arrhythmias, which can be fatal. 

Nonetheless, we now have 3 drugs that seem to reduce mortality in the sickest patients. If anyone I know gets sick with COVID-19, I will tell them to ask their doctors for dexamethasone, if the doctors have offered it right away.

Despite this progress, the world desperately needs a vaccine. Over 100 vaccine candidates are currently being pursued, and let's all hope that some of them succeed. It can't happen soon enough.