Life (Aug 2021)

Repurposing Colchicine in Treating Patients with COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

  • Chi-Hone Lien,
  • Ming-Dar Lee,
  • Shun-Long Weng,
  • Chao-Hsu Lin,
  • Lawrence Yu-Min Liu,
  • Yu-Lin Tai,
  • Wei-Te Lei,
  • Jui-Ming Liu,
  • Ya-Ning Huang,
  • Hsin Chi,
  • Nan-Chang Chiu,
  • Chien-Yu Lin

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080864
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 8
p. 864

Abstract

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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) had caused huge health losses worldwide. Several drugs had been applied to treat patients with COVID-19, and repurposing colchicine had been proposed for its anti-inflammatory properties via several pathways. In this systematic review, we evaluated the effects of colchicine treatment. From inception to May 31, 2021, databases, including PubMed, EMbase, medRxiv, and Research Square were searched, and 11 studies were enrolled. A total of 17,205 COVID-19 patients with male predominance (62.9%) were analyzed. Patients with colchicine treatment had a significantly lower risk of mortality (odds ratio (OR): 0.57, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.38–0.87, I2: 72%; p I2: 33%; p = 0.22). In conclusion, our meta-analysis found that colchicine treatment was associated with a significantly lower risk of mortality in patients with COVID-19. However, this benefit was not observed in the subgroup analysis of randomized controlled trials. Further randomized controlled studies are required to confirm the potential benefits of colchicine treatment.

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