Study summary · research use only
The efficacy of thymosin alpha-1 therapy in moderate to critical COVID-19 patients: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression
Plain-language summary
Paraphrased from the published abstract below — not a verdict on whether anything works.
This systematic review and meta-analysis examined thymosin alpha-1 therapy in moderate to critical COVID-19 patients, searching four database sources through March 25th, 2023, and pooling data from 8 studies. Thymosin alpha-1 therapy was associated with lower mortality (risk ratio 0.59; 95% CI 0.37-0.93; I2 = 84%) compared with placebo, but showed no difference in need for mechanical ventilation (risk ratio 0.83) or hospital length of stay. The mortality benefit was significantly affected by sample size and sex in meta-regression. The authors describe these findings as suggesting thymosin alpha-1 treatment may reduce mortality in moderate to critical COVID-19 patients, while noting randomized clinical trials are still needed to confirm the findings.
Abstract
Effort to search for the optimal COVID-19 treatment has continuously been attempted. Thymosin alpha-1 have immunomodulatory properties which may be beneficial in case of viral infection. This study's goal is to determine whether thymosin alpha-1 is effective in treating people with moderate-to-severe COVID-19. We searched for literature in 4 database: Scopus, Europe PMC, Medline, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Cochrane Library until March 25th, 2023. If those articles have data on the efficacy of thymosin alpha-1 therapy on COVID-19, they would be included. Risk ratio (RR) and Mean Difference (MD) along with their 95% confidence intervals were used to pool the results of dichotomous and continuous variables, respectively. Pooled data from 8 studies indicated that moderate to critical Covid-19 patients who were receiving thymosin alpha-1 therapy had significantly lower mortality from COVID-19 (RR 0.59; 95% CI 0.37-0.93, p = 0.02, I2 = 84%), but without any difference in the needs for mechanical ventilation (RR 0.83; 95% CI 0.48-1.44, p = 0.51, I2 = 74%) and hospital length of stay (MD 2.32; 95% CI - 0.93, 5.58, p = 0.16, I2 = 94%) compared to placebo. The benefits of thymosin alpha-1 on the mortality rate were significantly affected only by sample size (p = 0.0000) and sex (p = 0.0117). Our study suggests that treatment with thymosin alpha-1 may reduce mortality rate in moderate to critical COVID-19 patients. Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are still required to verify the findings of our study.
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