Skip to main content

Protective Benefit of Colchicine in COVID-19 Infection

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:

Clinical Outcomes in GRECCO Trial
  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.

ADD THE FIRST COMMENT

If you are a health practitioner, you may to comment.

Due to the nature of these comment forums, only health practitioners are allowed to comment at this time.

Disclosures
The author has no conflicts of interest to disclose related to this subject