Famotidine is widely considered safe for use in humans, cats, dogs, and horses. However, as with any medication, it is ...

Stock photo: Famotidine oral tablets. iStock. Callahan was in Wuhan, China during the city's outbreak and had been examining medical records of COVID-19 patients when he noticed something unusual.

Ten people who were home sick with Covid-19 may have found relief with a common over-the-counter heartburn remedy, according to a study published Thursday.

Patients who took a common heartburn medicine while hospitalized for Covid-19 were more than twice as likely to survive the infection, according to a paper posted Friday on a pre-publication website.

Famotidine, a histamine-2 receptor antagonist, was identified as a potential COVID-19 treatment after computational techniques showed it could inhibit a SARS-CoV-2 protease.

“Famotidine is kind of a poor man’s tocilizumab,” said Offit, a member of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

Famotidine is a safe, low-cost, over-the-counter drug usually used to treat heartburn. People with COVID-19 often get sick because the body’s inflammatory response to the virus gets overactivated.

Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here. A drug that many Americans are used to taking to ease heartburn is being investigated as a potential ...

Famotidine has been found to have antiviral properties by inhibiting HIV replication, leading researchers to hypothesize it would mitigate cytokine storm, a strong immune response, that is a ...

As consumers and physicians shifted from Zantac to generic famotidine and Pepcid, drug makers struggled to keep up. Some manufacturers have reported shortages of the drug to the F.D.A. this year.