Clinical Trial to Evaluate Methylprednisolone Pulses and Tacrolimus in Patients With COVID-19 Lung Injury

Overview

The primary objective of the study is to evaluate the days until reaching clinical stability after starting randomization in hospitalized patients with elevated inflammatory parameters and severe COVID-19 lung injury.

Unfortunately, the treatment of COVID-19 disease is still based on life support therapies. Nowadays, there is no scientific evidence from clinical trials regarding the efficacy or safety of different drugs to treat COVID-19 patients, despite some of them evolving to fatal severe lung injury due to important inflammatory process secondary to pro-inflammatory cytokines. Interestingly, Tacrolimus has been shown to inhibit both pro-inflammatory cytokines and, also, human coronavirus SARS-Cov replication, but it has not specifically been tested in COVID-19 patients. Our working hypothesis is that severe SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pneumonia is secondary to a deleterious inflammatory process; so, the use of Methylprednisolone pulses and Tacrolimus in hospitalized severe COVID-19 lung injury patients might have a positive clinical effect. Given the COVID-19 current health emergency, this study could provide useful evidence to treat some COVID-19 patients with Methylprednisolona and Tacrolimus, which might represent a new therapeutic option for them. Tacrolimus is a drug with more than 20 years of experience, and therefore, its side effects are well known and usually reversible. In addition, since tacrolimus is a low-cost and easy to produce at large-scale drug, it could be used to treat a large number of patients. The administration of this drugs could not only decrease mortality secondary to lung involvement by COVID-19, but also decrease the excessive burden of care that intensive care units are bearing.

Conditions

Interventions

Eligibility

Locations (1)

Outcomes

Central Contacts