BOISE, Idaho — Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, there has been a lot of talk about vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus. And dozens of studies have taken place in an effort to combat the virus.
St. Lukes in Boise is one of 50 health systems in the world that was selected to participate in a COVID-19 clinical trial called EMPACTA.
Now, the results are in.
“What they found was the study met its primary endpoint which is that patients progressed at a lower rate to mechanical ventilation or death when they were treated with [immunosuppressive drug] Actemra, plus the standard of care,” said Dr. Karen Miller, a pulmonologist at St. Luke's.
According to Miller, this was the first randomized, placebo-controlled trial that's shown benefits in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia after they used Actemra, a brand-name for the immunosuppressive drug tocilizumab.
In many cases, the antiviral drug Remdesivir was also used, but there's another component. The study included an initiative to enroll more minority patients in the research.
“They were able to achieve that goal with, I believe, 85% of the patients being minority patients and they were particularly wanting to enroll minority patients because the disease had disproportionally affected minorities,” Miller said.
So what does this trial mean for COVID-19 treatment moving forward?
“I think what we have to recognize is this is the very best, quality evidence that we can produce in medical research,” Miller said. “You don’t want to put people on the ventilator and when you're on the ventilator, you often have to have sedation, pain medication, you often have to have a paralytic if you're fighting the ventilator and this puts you at risk for various things like ventilator-acquired pneumonia or muscle weakness from different medications, so keeping COVID-19 patients off the vent is a good thing.”
Currently, St. Luke's is conducting another clinical trial called REMDACTA, that involves patients who are already on a ventilator.
The hospital is also gearing up to participate in a third clinical trial in a few weeks known as RESOLUTION. This trial will be in the pill form.
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