Metoprolol may be useful for critical patients of coronavirus

‘Metoprolol’, a drug that costs less than two euros and has so far been used against cardiovascular diseases, could be useful in critical patients with coronaviruses. These are the encouraging data that show the first results of a pilot study of 20 patients diagnosed with severe COVID-19 and who improved their lung function and needed fewer days in the ICU after administering this drug.

The research is being carried out by the National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) and the first results have been published in the academic journal ‘Journal of American College of Cardiology’. They say that ‘metoprolol’, a drug that CNIC is used to treating, could be a new formula to treat the most serious cases of COVID-19, where patients lose their lung capacity and need intubation to continue living.

It is one of the most serious manifestations of coronavirus and, now, could have a known and economical formula to be treated. Severe respiratory failure is associated with high mortality in Covid patients admitted to the ICU. However, for now there is a lack of therapies to treat this expression of the disease.

When the CNIC team found out that the composition of ‘metoprolol’ could have certain benefits on the oxygenation of critical patients in coronavirus, they started a pilot trial together with the Fundación Jiménez Díaz Hospital in Madrid. Treatment is given intravenously and the medication infiltrates into the pulmonary inflammatory artery.

“We randomized 20 patients with severe covid-19 and newly intubated and introduced intravenous metoprolol (15 mg daily for 3 days). We studied the inflammatory infiltrate in the bronchoalveolar fluid before and after treatment, as well as the clinical evolution in terms of oxygenation and days under mechanical ventilation, “explains the principal investigator in charge of the study, Borja Ibáñez.