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The asthma drug fluticasone furoate is yet another medication that doesn’t work for mild-to-moderate COVID-19, a new study finds.

“There was no evidence of improvement in time to recovery or reduction in hospitalizations in participants who took fluticasone furoate versus those who took a placebo,” lead researcher Dr. Adrian Hernandez, executive director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, said in a Duke news release.

The finding comes from a nationwide study of nearly 5,000 participants that continues to evaluate the potential benefit of existing drugs to treat mild-to-moderate COVID-19. Fluticasone furoate is one of three FDA-approved repurposed medications currently being tested against COVID-19.

Repurposed medications are drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for other medical purposes.

Fluticasone furoate is an inhaled corticosteroid used to treat asthma, but it is not approved to treat COVID-19. This drug was tested because corticosteroids had seemed potentially beneficial for treating COVID-19 among non-hospitalized patients. Based on their findings, fluticasone furoate should not be used to treat COVID-19, the researchers stressed.

The report was published online July 13 in medRxiv, which publishes studies before they have been peer-reviewed.

More information

For more on COVID-19 treatments, see the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

SOURCE: Duke University, news release, July 13, 2022

Source: HealthDay

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