Higher estrogen levels linked to lower COVID death risk; antacid shows
promise addressing symptoms
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[February 18, 2022]
By Nancy Lapid
(Reuters) - The following is a summary of
some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants
further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be
certified by peer review.
Higher estrogen levels tied to lower COVID death risk
A new study strengthens suspicions that the female hormone estrogen
protects against death from COVID-19.
Researchers in Sweden studied 14,685 older women with COVID-19, all of
whom were past menopause, during which estrogen levels decline
dramatically. Seventeen percent were taking estrogen supplements to
relieve menopausal symptoms. After adjusting for other risk factors,
women getting extra estrogen had a 53% lower risk of dying from COVID-19
compared to untreated women, the researchers reported on Monday in BMJ
Open. Observational studies such as this one cannot prove higher
estrogen levels are protective. Furthermore, the women were infected
before vaccines were available, said Dr. Malin Sund of Umea University.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Aug/26/images/ads/current/ldn_sda_062409.png)
"Vaccination has clearly been shown to protect from COVID-19 related
mortality and the potential added value from estrogen (in vaccinated
women) cannot be estimated from this data," Sund said. The idea that
estrogen might be protective in hospitalized COVID-19 patients is now
being tested more rigorously in a randomized controlled trial at Tulane
University.
Antacid shows promise against COVID-19 symptoms
In non-hospitalized, unvaccinated adults with mild-to-moderate COVID-19,
treatment with a high dose of the antacid drug famotidine helped speed
resolution of symptoms and inflammation in a small randomized controlled
trial.
Roughly half of those in the 55-patient trial took famotidine - the main
ingredient in Johnson & Johnson's widely used over-the-counter Pepsid
heartburn drug - three times a day for two weeks. The others took a
dummy pill. Patients in the famotidine group had faster resolution of 14
of 16 symptoms assessed in the study, including loss of smell and taste,
difficulty breathing and abdominal pain. Famotidine treatment also led
to faster improvements in markers of inflammation without any
detrimental effects on patients' immune responses, the researchers
reported in the journal Gut. About a third of the study's participants
were Black and a quarter Hispanic.
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A healthcare worker takes a swab sample from a woman to test for the
coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a COVID-19 testing centre in
Brussels, Belgium, January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Yves Herman
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/18/images/ads/current/graue_21BLAZER_081621.png) "We hope that the data we are
sharing with this study guide future trials that are necessary to
confirm famotidine as a treatment for patients with COVID-19," study
leader Dr. Tobias Janowitz of Northwell Health and Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory said in a news release.
U.S. may have overestimated COVID-19 hospitalizations
U.S. statistics likely overestimate how many patients have been
hospitalized for COVID-19, according to a new study.
At 60 hospitals near Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago, researchers
manually reviewed the charts of a random sample of 1,123 patients
with confirmed coronavirus infections hospitalized between March
2020 and August 2021. Roughly 1-in-4 patients "actually were
admitted for a different problem and should not have been included"
in data analytics calculations of the severity of COVID-19, said Dr.
Shawn Murphy of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Patients
were more likely to have been admitted specifically for COVID-19
when local infection rates were high, his team reported on Tuesday
on medRxiv ahead of peer review. When infection rates were low last
summer, up to half the patients were hospitalized for other reasons,
with SARS-CoV-2 infection found coincidentally on mandatory testing.
The researchers were able to identify indicators in patients' charts
that admissions were actually due to COVID-19, such as whether
doctors ordered lab tests related to inflammation.
"This study highlights an important weakness in COVID-19 reporting,
which might have implications on intensive care utilization, cost
analysis, resource planning, and research," said Jeffrey Klann, also
of Mass General. Adding the identified indicators to data analytics
software "could help mitigate these problems."
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid and Megan Brooks; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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