We are pleased to report a 71 percent reduction in mortality for the group receiving baricitinib in addition to standard care," says Volker Lauschke, corresponding author and associate professor of personalized medicine and drug development at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet. "These results are especially encouraging seeing as the study included a large cohort of elderly patients, a group that is often excluded in other trials."
In the study, 83 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia in Italy and Spain were treated with baricitinib in addition to standard care. Of these, 17 percent suffered an adverse outcome that resulted in death or invasive mechanical ventilation. This compared to 35 percent in the matched control group of 83 patients who received standard care only. The patients had a median age of 81 years.
The drug was generally well tolerated with a reduction in inflammation from the first treatment days, according to the researchers. Previously reported side-effects of long-term baricitinib use, including coagulopathy and thrombosis, were not evident in any of the patients, possibly due to treatment with anti-coagulating medicine. ...snip... The researchers note that a limitation of the study was the lack of a placebo control group, which is included in industry-sponsored randomized controlled trials that are currently ongoing.
