Cancer Drug Greatly Reduces Deaths in Hospitalized Covid Patients

The company sought volunteers who were already in the hospital for Covid. To be eligible for the trial, the patients had to be receiving oxygen or relying on a ventilator. They also had to be at high risk of dying of Covid, with risk factors such as hypertension, advanced age or obesity.

The patients were allowed to simultaneously receive other treatments that have been shown to be effective at saving lives of hospitalized Covid patients. A steroid called dexamethasone, for example, reduces the risk of death by one-third.

In the latest trial, 134 volunteers received sabizabulin and 70 a placebo. Over the course of 60 days, the death rates of the two groups were significantly different: 45.1 percent of the placebo group died compared with just 20.2 percent of those who received the new drug. That difference translated to a 55.2 percent reduction in the risk of death.

Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, cautioned that the large number of deaths in the placebo group could be a sign the study was too small to draw firm conclusions.

“The 45 percent mortality rate in the control group jumps out at me as rather high,” he said.

By contrast, in a trial of an arthritis drug called baricitinib, researchers gave the drug to 515 Covid patients while 518 received a placebo. Only 7.8 percent of the placebo group died.

A number of antiviral drugs have proved effective at keeping Covid patients out of the hospital, but only if they’re given early in the course of their disease. Paxlovid, for instance, can reduce the risk of hospitalization for unvaccinated people with Covid risk factors by about 90 percent.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/health/covid-drug-cancer-sabizabulin.html