Last Updated on June 17, 2020, 3:44 AM AST by Anthony Morris
An inexpensive steroid, dexamethasone, has shown the potential to reduce the deaths due to coronavirus infection and has helped some of the sickest patients with severe lung damage to survive the illness.
The 60-year-old drug is the first medication which has shown an increase in people’s chances of surviving COVID-19 coronavirus.
It has reduced the risk of death for the patients who are on the ventilators by a third and it cuts the risk of death for the patients on oxygen by one fifth, heartening news which has drawn widespread interest and hope from the people.
British regulators have readily approved the drug for use in the hospitalized patients who require oxygen, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has shared the results and declared that there was a genuine reason to celebrate a remarkable British scientific achievement and the benefits it would bring not just to the United Kingdom but around the whole world.
Dexamethasone is a workhorse steroid which is typically used to treat inflammation, including flare-ups of rheumatoid arthritis, and was given as a tablet or as a liquid or as an intravenous preparation in the trial.
Several other steroids are also under trial against COVID-19.
Outside physicians have tempered their optimism regarding the news with urgent calls to release the details of researchers’ findings so that the doctors could pore over the data and understand the benefits and limitations of the drug.
However, without the complete data from the trials, physicians such as Bogoch are in a difficult situation.
Bogoch said that if a patient would come into the hospital today with COVID-19, he would not be sure whether he would use the drug or when he would start it without more information.
As of Tuesday afternoon, treatment guidelines from the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health recommended against using steroids because of the lack of evidence that the benefit of the drugs outweighs the potential harm.
Anthony Morris covers stories related to politics and regional developments. His in-depth reporting about governance and reforms makes him stand out in regional journalism, with a deep analysis of political trends and their impact on Caribbean communities.
