Early treatment with inhaled budesonide shortens recovery time by a median of three days in community-treated patients with COVID who are at higher risk of more severe illness, according to preliminary results from an Oxford University trial.
Inhaled budesonide is a safe, fairly cheap and readily available corticosteroid commonly used in inhalers for the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Based on an interim analysis using the latest data from 25th March 2021, the results showed the estimated median time to self-reported recovery for inhaled budesonide was three days shorter compared to usual care, with a high probability of being superior to the usual standard of care. Of those taking inhaled budesonide, 32% recovered within the first 14 days and stayed well until the 28 day endpoint, compared to 22% receiving usual care. Budesonide group participants also reported greater wellbeing after two weeks.
Among patients who had completed the study, 8.5% (59/692) in the budesonide group were hospitalised with COVID compared with 10.3% (100/968) in the usual care group, with an estimated percentage benefit of 2.1%. However as fewer than expected people were admitted to hospital in the trial, and with COVID cases falling in the UK, it is not clear from this interim analysis whether budesonide reduces hospitalisations.
Patients with COVID symptoms that started within 14 days and who are at higher risk of a poor outcome from the illness were eligible to join the trial and those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were included in the main analysis. Patients receiving inhaled budesonide were asked to inhale 800 micrograms twice a day for 14 days, with a 28 day follow-up.
Joint Chief Investigator, Professor Chris Butler, a South Wales GP and Professor of Primary Care from the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, said, “PRINCIPLE, the world’s largest platform trial of community-based treatments for COVID-19, has found evidence that a relatively cheap, widely available drug with very few side effects helps people at higher risk of worse outcomes from COVID recover quicker, stay better once they feel recovered, and improves their wellbeing. We therefore anticipate that medical practitioners around the world caring for people with COVID in the community may wish to consider this evidence when making treatment decisions, as it should help people with COVID recover quicker.”
When the data has been obtained and analysed, detailed results on time to recovery and hospitalisations will be published. The full pre-print is available on the MedRxiv server.
Source: University of Oxford
