That will dramatically reduce the fatality rate worldwide. An old cheap steroid!

Even better, the drug costs only 5 pounds a day.

Aren't steroids immune suppressors? This seems somewhat counter to the other discussions that people with compromised immune systems are more at risk.

From other things I've read, after you have to go on vent you're in really bad shape and they have to try to suppress the immune system.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/16/steroid-dexamethasone-reduces-deaths-from-severe-covid-19-trial.html

Scientists hail dexamethasone as 'major breakthrough' in treating coronavirus

Quote:

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Results of trials announced on Tuesday showed dexamethasone, which is used to reduce inflammation in other diseases, reduced death rates by around a third among the most severely ill Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital.

The results suggest the drug should immediately become standard care in patients with severe cases of the pandemic disease, said the researchers who led the trials.

"This is a result that shows that if patients who have Covid-19 and are on ventilators or are on oxygen are given dexamethasone, it will save lives, and it will do so at a remarkably low cost," said Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor co-leading the trial, known as the RECOVERY trial.

...

Among patients with Covid-19 who did not require respiratory support, there was no benefit from treatment with dexamethasone.

"The survival benefit is clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen treatment, so dexamethasone should now become standard of care in these patients," Horby said.

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question for the docs

is this already standard of care stateside?

I wonder if there is any benefit over anti IL6 antibodies which seem to be standard of care in the US. The UK tends to be much more price sensitive in their healthcare system so a lot of biologics get used less there.

This is great news that will save a lot of lives...especially in poorer countries

It will be interesting to see how rapidly you inpt docs start using this. Large study that seems at a quick glance to be well designed, when do you integrate this into standard practice?

I don't think anything will be "standard" anytime soon as it's so novel. I'll probably start using it for sicker folks. Let the FDA and other pundits chew on it.

This study came out of Oxford. If holes get easily poked in this research, I'm done even paying attention to news on studies, research, trials, etc.

More data published today. This looks like a good study. Randomization was pretty good. Plenty of participants. Study wasn't blinded to the treating physicians, but that's not really a big deal in a study like this.



NNT looks like it is around 29 for people on o2 and around 9 for folks on vents.

Another interesting data point coming out of this study is how many people with chronic lung disease needed vents, which turned out to be significantly less than those with diabetes and heart disease. Yet another data point showing that this virus is less of a lung disease and more of an inflammatory vascular disease.

Still waiting on a study showing the possibility of glutathione and/or acetylcysteine being effective in reducing the inflammatory response due to reduction of oxidative stress. From a biochem perspective I think that has a lot of potential.