Successful Treatment of Covid-19 Associated Cytokine Release Syndrome with Colchicine. A Case Report and Review of Literature.

ABSTRACT

We describe the case of a 42 year old, healthy patient with Covid-19 who despite improvement in his respiratory symptoms developed a mild to moderate cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and an associated monoarticular gout flare. Since the patient refused admission to the hospital and had stable vital signs, we chose to treat him with a safe anti-inflammatory and non-immunosuppressive therapy. To hit two birds with one stone, we considered colchicine, as it has systemic anti-inflammatory effects and is also effective in gout flare. Unexpectedly, 48 hours after treatment, not only did his ongoing fever and toe pain disappear, he also had significant improvements in his general state of health and all his inflammatory markers including fibrinogen, ferritin, D-dimer, and IL-6 levels normalized. To our knowledge, the use of colchicine in Covid-19 and CRS has not been reported. This observation merits the consideration of colchicine as a safe, inexpensive and oral medication for the treatment of mild to moderate CRS in Covid-19 patients. More importantly, in Covid-19 patients with early lung involvement colchicine may be an appropriate candidate to prevent CRS in adjunction with routine antiviral agents. Indeed, multicenter, randomized controlled studies are required to evaluate the benefits of this therapy.