ICYMI: Protective Benefit of Colchicine in COVID-19 Infection Save
Editor's note: This article was originally published June 26, 2020 and is being shared again while RheumNow is on vacation in case you missed it.
Colchicine has been advocated as a potential antiinflammatory intervention in patients with the coronavirus 2 infection and clinical trials have been developed to assess its effect in early COVID-2 infection. JAMA has published a randomized clinical trial showing that low dose colchicine had less clinical deterioration without significant changes in biomarkers, such as high-sensitivity cardiac troponin and C-reactive protein.
The GRECCO study was a prospective, open-label, randomized clinical trial of 105 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who were randomized 1:1 to either
colchicine (1.5-mg loading dose followed by 0.5 mg twice daily) or placebo on a background of standard medical treatment. The primary end points were (1) maximum high-sensitivity cardiac troponin; (2) C-reactive protein; and (3) time to deterioration by 2 points (7-grade clinical status scale)
Patients were 58% male, mean age of 64 years). Enpoint outcomes were as shown below:
| Colchicine | Control | p Value | |
| hs cardiac troponin (ng/ml) | 0.008 | 0.0112 | P = 0.34 |
| C-reactive protein (mg/dl) | 3.1 | 4.5 | P = 0.73 |
| Primary Clinical endpoint | 1.8% | 14% | P = 0.02 |
| Event-free survival (days) | 20.7 | 18.6 | P = 0.03 |
Adverse events were similar in the 2 groups, except for diarrhea, which was more frequent with colchicine group than the control group (25 patients [45.5%] vs 9 patients [18.0%]; P = .003).
In this randomized clinical trial, those who received colchicine had a longer time to clinical deterioration.
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