Famotidine

Many of us suffer from gastric reflux, which manifests itself as a burning sensation known variously as heartburn, acid indigestion, and cardialgia. The preeminent treatment for this condition is famotidine, a drug developed in Japan and marketed since 1981 in the United States and elsewhere under the trade name Pepcid. The patents on famotidine expired in 2001, after which generic versions came onto the market.

Famotidine is a histamine H₂ antagonist. It prevents histamine in the parietal cells of the stomach from secreting the acid that triggers heartburn.

This year, in their quest to identify existing drugs that might prevent or ease the effects of the COVID-19 virus, researchers noted that Chinese patients who took famotidine for heartburn had a higher rate of surviving the disease than those who used other heartburn medications. In April, physicians at Northwell Health hospitals in New York City and surrounding locations began to administer famotidine intravenously to critically ill patients. By the next month, the self-described Famotidine Research Team observed that patients treated with famotidine had half the risk of needing a ventilator—or dying—than untreated patients.

The researchers cautioned that these results could not be interpreted as a recommendation for using famotidine to ameliorate COVID-19 because many of the subjects were also on the now-discredited hydroxychloroquine regimen and because no cause-and-effect relationship between famotidine and the virus had been established. In late June, the Infectious Diseases Society of America recommended against the use of famotidine because of insufficient data at the time. The society repeated its recommendation in July.

Interestingly, a famotidine shortage that surfaced in the past few months cannot be completely attributed to physicians’ or COVID-19 patients’ attempts to use it against the virus. Recalls of the competing drug ranitidine have prompted its users to switch to famotidine.