By: Nature

An inexpensive and commonly used steroid can save the lives of people seriously ill with COVID-19, a randomized, controlled clinical trial in the United Kingdom has found. The drug, called dexamethasone, is the first shown to reduce deaths from the coronavirus that has killed more than 440,000 people globally. In the trial, it cut deaths by about one-third in patients who were on ventilators because of coronavirus infection.

“It’s a startling result,” says Kenneth Baillie, an intensive-care physician at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who serves on the steering committee of the trial, called RECOVERY. “It will clearly have a massive global impact.” The RECOVERY study announced the findings in a press release on 16 June, and in a preprint posted to medRxiv on 22 June1.

The RECOVERY trial, launched in March, is one of the world’s largest randomized, controlled trials for coronavirus treatments; it is testing a range of potential therapies. The dexamethasone arm enrolled 2,100 participants who received the drug at a low-to-moderate dose of 6 milligrams per day for 10 days, and compared how they fared against about 4,300 people who received standard care for coronavirus infection.

The effect of dexamethasone was most striking among critically ill patients on ventilators. Those who were receiving oxygen therapy but were not on ventilators also saw improvement: their risk of dying was reduced by 20%. The steroid had no effect on people with less severe cases of COVID-19 — those not receiving oxygen or ventilation.

Shortly after the results were released, the UK government announced that it had immediately authorized the use of dexamethasone for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who required oxygen, including those on ventilators. The researchers say that they are also sharing their findings with regulators in the United Kingdom and internationally.

 

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01824-5?utm_source=twt_nnc&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=naturenews