Famotidine study shows Covid-19 patients who took heartburn drug were less likely to die, but researchers caution more research is needed

CNN — Patients who took a common heartburn medicine while hospitalized for Covid-19 were more than twice as likely to survive the infection, according to a paper posted Friday on a pre-publication website. “This is merely an association, and these findings should not be interpreted to mean that famotidine improves outcomes in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.” Doctor cautions against starting famotidine The study was published on medrxiv.org, a preprint server founded by Yale University, the medical journal BMJ and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Based on these results, Conigliaro said he knows that doctors might start prescribing famotidine to their coronavirus patients now, before the results of the clinical trial are known, but he doesn’t recommend it. “The poor peasants really seemed to do well on famotidine,” said Dr. Kevin Tracey, president of Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health, said. “There are a lot of anecdotes passing around that give us some hope.” While these observations in China – and now New York – might point the way to famotidine as a treatment for Covid-19, the researchers emphasized that only the clinical trial can determine for sure whether the drug works against the virus.