Autumn Crocus?

A much larger study is needed before we should take this report too seriously but it’s certainly intriguing. UPI reports on treating COVID-19 using colchicine:

The medication, called colchicine, is an anti-inflammatory taken as a pill. It’s long been prescribed for gout, a form of arthritis, and its history goes back centuries. The drug was first sourced from the autumn crocus flower.

Doctors also sometimes use colchicine to treat pericarditis, where the sac around the heart becomes inflamed.

Now, a team of Greek researchers reporting Wednesday in JAMA Network Open said their small trial suggests colchicine may indeed help curb severe COVID-19.

The trial involved 105 Greek patients hospitalized in April with COVID-19. Besides receiving standard antibiotics and antivirals (but not remdesivir), half of the participants got daily doses of colchicine for up to three weeks, while the other half did not.

The results “suggest a significant clinical benefit from colchicine in patients hospitalized with COVID-19,” according to the team led by Dr. Spyridon Deftereos, a cardiologist at Attikon Hospital in Attiki, Greece.

Specifically, while the condition of seven of 50 patients who didn’t get colchicine “clinically deteriorated” to a severe stage (for example, requiring mechanical ventilation to survive), this was true for just one of the 55 patients who did receive colchicine, the researchers said.

My guess is that we’re going to find a long list of medications, old as well as new, that have a marginal effect on COVID-19.

In the particular case of colchicine, there is considerable experience with and it’s cheap.