Greek scientists from the Athens School of Medicine who have joined dozens of renowned scientists at the Humanitas University in Italy, the University of Valencia in Spain and Yale University in the US, hope that the drug will reduce the risks of pulmonary complications and death related to the new coronavirus.<\/p>\n
Several COVID-19 patients have had severe complications from a surge of activated immune cells in the lungs. Scientists are hoping the drug colchicine will work to moderate the overproduction of immune cells and their activating compounds \u2014 called cytokines \u2014 in COVID-19 patients.<\/p>\n
If it proves to be successful, the drug \u2014 which is already used to treat gout and pericarditis (inflammation of the heart membrane), and is readily available and inexpensive \u2014 could become a key tool in the pandemic fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that timely administration [of colchicine] may reduce the aggressiveness of pneumonia and thus reduce the chances of the patient developing respiratory failure,\u201d Gerasimos Siasos Vice President of the Athens School of Medicine and Associate Professor of Cardiology said.<\/p>\n
He also added that colchicine will \u201creduce the likelihood of heart complications such as the myocardial injury observed in the majority of patients treated in intensive care units or the prevention of episodes of myocarditis of a complication observed in a proportion of patients who died.\u201d<\/p>\n
On March 23, researchers at the Montreal Heart Institute announced they are recruiting up to 6,000 Quebecers over the age of 40 who test positive for the novel coronavirus to study whether colchicine is effective.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s inexpensive, it\u2019s widely available and the reason why we think it might very well work is that it\u2019s a powerful anti-inflammatory agent,\u201d Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif, the institute\u2019s research director, said in an interview with CBC Montreal\u2019s Daybreak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As scientists around the world are racing to find novel ways to treat, mitigate or prevent infection from the novel coronavirus, Greek doctors announced earlier this week that they are looking at the possibility of administering colchicine, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug. Greek scientists from the Athens School of Medicine who have joined dozens of renowned …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,17,1,107,167],"tags":[21039,3678,62792],"class_list":["post-65233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-general","category-health","category-technology","tag-athens-greece","tag-greek","tag-scientists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}