Higher estrogen levels linked to lower COVID death risk; antacid shows promise addressing symptoms

FILE PHOTO: A healthcare worker takes a swab sample from a woman to test for the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a COVID-19 testing center in Brussels, Belgium, January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Yves Herman

A new study strengthens suspicions that the female hormone estrogen protects against death from COVID-19.

Researchers in Sweden studied 14,685 older women with COVID-19, all of whom were past menopause, during which estrogen levels decline dramatically. Seventeen percent were taking estrogen supplements to relieve menopausal symptoms.

After adjusting for other risk factors, women getting extra estrogen had a 53 percent lower risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to untreated women, the researchers reported on Monday in BMJ Open.

Observational studies such as this one cannot prove higher estrogen levels are protective. Furthermore, the women were infected before vaccines were available, said Dr. Malin Sund of Umea University.

“Vaccination has clearly been shown to protect from COVID-19 related mortality and the potential added value from estrogen (in vaccinated women) cannot be estimated from this data,” Sund said.

The idea that estrogen might be protective in hospitalized COVID-19 patients is now being tested more rigorously in a randomized controlled trial at Tulane University.

In another development, a randomized controlled trial indicates that antacid shows promise against COVID-19 symptoms.

In non-hospitalized, unvaccinated adults with mild-to-moderate COVID-19, treatment with a high dose of the antacid drug famotidine helped speed resolution of symptoms and inflammation in a small randomized controlled trial.

Roughly half of those in the 55-patient trial took famotidine – the main ingredient in Johnson & Johnson’s widely used over-the-counter Pepsid heartburn drug – three times a day for two weeks. The others took a dummy pill.

Patients in the famotidine group had faster resolution of 14 of 16 symptoms assessed in the study, including loss of smell and taste, difficulty breathing, and abdominal pain. Famotidine treatment also led to faster improvements in markers of inflammation without any detrimental effects on patients’ immune responses, the researchers reported in the journal Gut. About a third of the study’s participants were Black and a quarter Hispanic.

“We hope that the data we are sharing with this study guide future trials that are necessary to confirm famotidine as a treatment for patients with COVID-19,” study leader Dr. Tobias Janowitz of Northwell Health and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said in a news release.

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