The Montreal Heart Institute (MHI) is continuing the COLCORONA clinical trial to recruit non-hospitalised adult patients with Covid-19 following a second interim analysis.
The continuation of the trial is in line with the recommendation of the independent data monitoring committee (DMC).
MHI noted that the contact-free, at-home, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study is taking place in Canada, the US and Europe, as well as South America and South Africa.
It will analyse whether colchicine can reduce the risk of serious complications linked to Covid-19.
The participants of the trial must be 40 years or above diagnosed with and currently have Covid-19.
MHI Research Center director Dr Jean-Claude Tardif said: “With the dramatic rise in Covid-19 cases across the world, it is becoming even more critical that we continue to investigate treatments that can not only help those hospitalised with severe disease, but also those with less severe symptoms who are able to remain at home.
“We aim at completing patient recruitment in this large study within the next month and hope that colchicine will reduce the risk of Covid-19 complications.”
COLCORONA trial is one among the few large-scale studies of Covid-19 progressing in non-hospitalised patients.
Funded by the Government of Quebec, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) unit the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the Montreal Health Innovations Coordinating Center (MHICC) is coordinating the trial.
Apart from this, information technology firm CGI, clinical research Electronic Data Capture (EDC) software maker Dacima and pharma company Pharmascience are among the trial collaborators.
