3. Results
A total number of 150 patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 disease (supplement table) were enrolled in the current study and after proper randomization, treated based on the current standard treatment protocol. The intervention group, including 50 patients, also received PTX on top of the standard protocol and was compared with the control group. Mean age of all enrolled patients was 61.32±15.59 years (54 ±14.32 vs. 64.99±14.96 in the intervention and control groups, respectively) and a total of 64% of the subjects were male (n=96).
In the baseline assessments for all patients, there were significant differences in CPK, CRP, LDH, AST, systolic blood pressure (BP), pulse rate (PR), age, and temperature between both groups of study (P<0.05). Additionally, the mean SO2 was not different at the admission time (Table 1 ). Primary qualitative assessments at the time of admission, such as headache, dyspnea, chest discomfort, body pain, weakness and fatigue, anorexia, anosmia, diarrhea, history of cardiovascular disease (CVD), drug history, similar symptoms in close relatives, fever, and chills showed significant differences in the intervention and control groups (P<0.05) (Table 2 ); however, the drugs reported in the patients’ past medical history were reported to have no effect on the mortality of patients in none of the groups (Table 3 ).
Clinical and preclinical assessment on all patients was again performed at the discharge time and the results revealed that platelets (PLT) were significantly increased in the intervention group after the treatment (P=0.001). Moreover, PR was reduced significantly in both groups compared to the baseline values (P<0.005). Diastolic BP was significantly decreased only in the intervention group posttreatment (P=0.023) and not among control patients (P=0.162). Moreover, Glasgow coma score (GCS) was significantly reduced in the control group from 14.85 to 11.62 (P=0.001), which implied a worse prognosis in this group. Furthermore, hospitalization days were reported to be less in the intervention group compared to the control group (7.02 vs. 10.83 days, respectively) (P=0.001) (Table 4 ).
The final assessment of patients’ clinical condition showed that 32% of individuals in the control group and 4% in the intervention group were expired (P<0.001, odds ratio=0.08) (Table 5 ). In addition, evaluation of CT score revealed that 1 out 13 patients (7.7%) with severe COVID-19 infection expired in the intervention group, while 20 out of 28 patients (71.4%) expired in the control group, showing about 10 times higher mortality rate compared to the PTX recipients (Table 6 ). Noteworthy, that there were eight patients in the intervention group and 12 patients in the control group that required re-hospitalization; however, the difference between both groups was not significant (P=0.497).