Medical News Today spoke with Catherine Oldenburg, Sc.D., co-principal private investigator in a brand brand-new human trial taking a look at the possible efficiency of Azithromycin, a common antibiotic, in treating milder cases of COVID-19, which the brand-new coronavirus triggers.
Recently, a team of detectives connected with the Francis I. Proctor Foundation at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), decided to examine the capacity of a common antibiotic– Azithromycin— in treating mild-to-moderate cases of COVID-19 that do not need hospitalization.
The trial– called Azithromycin for COVID-19 Treatment, Investigating Outpatients Nationwide, or ACTION for short– will include human individuals, and the researchers started hiring on May 26, 2020.
To get more information about the trial, and comprehend why the researchers selected to study Azithromycin, regardless of professionals normally encouraging versus prescription antibiotics in the treatment of COVID-19, Medical News Today spoke to among the trial’s principal investigators, Catherine Oldenburg, Sc.D., an infectious disease epidemiologist.
We have actually lightly modified the interview records for clearness.
MNT: What is the ACTION trial? Can you tell us a little about its premise and how it will work?
Catherine Oldenburg: The ACTION trial is a nationwide trial in the United States that is designed to assess the efficacy of a single dose of Azithromycin compared to placebo for [the] avoidance of hospitalization in COVID-19 clients who are not presently hospitalized, so clients who have […] anywhere from asymptomatic to moderate disease that doesn’t need hospitalization, and the trial is developed to be flexible and scalable.
It will be open to patients across the country in the U.S.; it’s performed remotely out of our trial coordinating center at UCSF.
So, clients can contact the research study team from throughout the U.S. and be screened from another location, go through all [the initial] procedures, and after that we deliver them [the] research study drug and sample collection kits.
MNT: How did you and your team zero in on Azithromycin as a prospective treatment for COVID-19?
Catherine Oldenburg: It’s a fantastic question. I think that […] it’s absolutely true, the mantra that […] prescription antibiotics don’t deal with viral infections. And so, it’s a bit counterproductive [to use Azithromycin in the treatment of COVID-19, which is the result of a viral infection].
My group has actually been working with Azithromycin and studying [it] for a number of indications for decades. Proctor [The Francis I. Proctor Foundation at UCSF], in basic, has been working with Azithromycin for trachoma control, which is an infection of the eye, [for] the last 20 years.
Therefore, in terms of trials [for] Azithromycin, that’s something that we do a great deal of. I have something like eight trials going on right now with Azithromycin, the majority of which are for trachoma, or for childhood mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa, where there’s a large burden of bacterial illness that’s [an existing issue].
However among the intriguing features of Azithromycin is that it has truly strong immunomodulatory results, so it has these type of nondirect impacts on the immune system. That implies it’s a fascinating candidate in regards to what it does to the body immune system.
So, in vitro, there have actually been reports revealing that Azithromycin has activity versus RNA viruses like Zika and rhinovirus and things like that.
And then […], I don’t keep in mind the precise date, but there was a research study out that type of developed a lot of buzz around Azithromycin in combination with hydroxychloroquine, and that’s sort of when we got interested, [thinking]: If there’s any indication that possibly Azithromycin has an effect against COVID-19, or against SARS-CoV-2, maybe that’s something that we ought to be taking a look at because our group really has a great deal of proficiency in regards to Azithromycin trials, particularly, and in conducting big trials.
Azithromycin is really safe; it’s prescribed all the time for all kinds of things; it’s something that people are very knowledgeable about in a Z pack in the U.S. It appeared like a great candidate for outpatients– if it had an effect– because of its security profile. And we decided to look at it separately of hydroxychloroquine, offered concerns about [the latter’s] security.
There are a lot of other trials going on with hydroxychloroquine, and we didn’t truly feel like we required to get associated with that since that was outside of our location of know-how.[…] That [is why] we’re looking at Azithromycin by itself.
And, we thought, provided the safety profile of Azithromycin, that this [drug] might be possibly important [in treating COVID-19]