Heartburn Drug Famotidine Seen By NY Hospital As Potential Coronavirus Treatment, People Hoard Supplies

Hospitals in New York are administering COVID-19 patients a common heartburn drug to see the effectiveness and results. The doses are being given as a part of a small clinical trial, which has remained less prominent in the eyes of the common man.

The clinical trial has been initiated by Dr. Kevin Tracey, president of Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health. The group has 23 hospitals running in the New York City area and the trial is being run in the same hospitals.

The trial involves the use of famotidine, the main ingredient in the common heartburn medicine Pepcid. The preliminary results of the clinical trial are supposed to be released by the end of the next week.

According to Tracey, 187 patients have enrolled themselves for the trial so far but he is hopeful to have as many as 1200 people enrolled for the study soon. He believes that since the drug is generic, inexpensive and widely available, it would be a biog breakthrough if the clinical trials reveal that famotidine works on COVID-19 patients.

Tracey and his colleagues based their decision to use famotidine for the clinical trial on their observation from data collected from Chinese patients. They observed that people with lower incomes were surviving better than wealthier patients, and both groups had heartburn. Later it was identified that the former group was taking famotidine, which is rather inexpensive as compared to the second group, which took more expensive drugs.

Additionally, Florida-based Alchem Laboratories prepared a list of existing drugs that may prove beneficial is the fight against coronavirus pandemic and famotidine was one of the top ones.

Even though Tracey has advised people not to go to the drugstore and hoard heartburn medicine, they seem to be doing exactly the opposite.

Most of the heartburn medicines appear to be out-of-stock with retailers such as Amazon and Walgreens at several zip codes.

"The fear, the chaos, and the panic is a far greater threat to humanity than a virus, especially for a therapy that may or may not work," said Michael Rea, previously a pharmacist and now the CEO of Rx Savings Solution. "Don't let fear dictate your decisions. Only use the drug, prescribe the drug, obtain the drug if you truly need it."