California: The findings of new research from UC San Francisco show that among patients who are not treated in hospitals, azithromycin antibiotics are no more effective than placebo in preventing covid-19 symptoms.
Even though the widespread antibiotic recipe for this disease, it can increase the possibility of hospitalization.
This study, carried out in collaboration with Stanford University, appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“This finding does not support the routine use of Azithromycin for SARS-COV-2 infection,” said the main author of Catherine E.
Oldenburg, SCD, MPH, assistant professor with the UCSF Proctor Foundation.
SARS-COV-2 is a virus that causes Covid-19.
Azithromycin, a broad spectrum antibiotic, is widely prescribed as a treatment for Covid-19 in the United States and the whole world.
“The hypothesis is that it has anti-inflammatory properties that can help prevent developments if treated at the beginning of the disease,” said Oldenburg.
“We did not find this to be the problem.” This study included 263 participants who were all tested positive for SARS-COV-2 in seven days before entering the study.
No one was hospitalized at the time of registration.
In the random selection process, 171 participants received one, 1.2-gram oral azithromycin dose and 92 received identical placebo.
On the 14th day of the study, 50 percent of participants remained symptoms free in both groups.
On the 21st day, five participants who received Azithromycin had been hospitalized with severe symptoms of Covid-19 and no placebo groups treated at the hospital.
The researchers concluded that treatment with a single dose of azithromycin compared to placebo did not produce greater possibilities than free symptoms.
“Most of the trial was carried out so far with Azithromycin focused on patients who were hospitalized with a severe disease,” said Oldenburg.
“Our paper is one of the first placebo-controlled studies that do not show a role for azithromycin in outpatients.”