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posted by martyb on Tuesday June 16 2020, @07:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the dex-bonus dept.

Life-saving coronavirus drug 'major breakthrough':

A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus.

The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say.

The drug is part of the world's biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.

[...] The drug is already used to reduce inflammation in a range of other conditions, and it appears that it helps stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus.

[...] In the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, around 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and were compared with more than 4,000 who did not receive the drug.

For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.

Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: "This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality - and it reduces it significantly. It's a major breakthrough."

[...] Dexamethasone has been used since the early 1960s to treat a wide range of conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma.

[...] The drug is given intravenously in intensive care, and in tablet form for less seriously ill patients. So far, the only other drug proven to benefit Covid patients is remdesivir, an antiviral treatment which has been used for Ebola.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:56PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:56PM (#1008869) Journal

    Weaken is a biased term, but it *is* acting to suppress the immune system (not quite the same thing) to minimize a cytokinetic storm. You *can* think of that as weakening the immune system, but that's not quite the right slant on it. Regulating it is better.

    That said, you wouldn't want to use this treatment during the early part of the infection, as it would just be dangerous and not helpful. You want it as the immune system starts going into overdrive.

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