Hospitals in New York are giving Covid-19 patients heartburn medicine to see if it helps fight the virus. Preliminary results of the clinical trial of famotidine, the active ingredient in Pepcid, could come out in the next few weeks.
Hospitals in New York are giving Covid-19 patients heartburn medicine to see if it helps fight the virus, according to the doctor who initiated the trial.
Preliminary results of the clinical trial of famotidine, the active ingredient in Pepcid, could come out in the next few weeks, said Dr. Kevin Tracey, president of Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health, which runs 23 hospitals in the New York City area. So far, 187 patients have enrolled in the clinical trial, and Northwell eventually hopes to enroll 1,200, he said.
He's also concerned that people who don't have heartburn will rush to stores to buy famotidine pills, mistakenly convinced it will help against coronavirus. That could leave heartburn patients in the lurch, especially since the FDA pulled Zantac -- a different heartburn medicine -- off the market earlier this month due to possible contamination. He said these are unusual concerns at an unusual time. "That's the reality of trying to do the right thing in a pandemic.
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