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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: 3, Insightful) by leon_the_cat on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:58PM (5 children)

    by leon_the_cat (10052) on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:58PM (#1008870) Journal

    watch the share price as someone is getting a brand new platinum ferrari. Then watch it get slowly dismantled and forgotten (the story not the ferrari).

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @10:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @10:19PM (#1008883)

    Average retail price of $46.90 right now and widely available generic. We'll see.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:25AM (3 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:25AM (#1008991)

    If it was a new drug, yeah. But this is an old cheap one, and I'm very surprised that nobody figured this out sooner. I wonder if anyone's tried good old aspirin.

    That said, my experience and observation of the medical world is they're mostly unwilling to try things "off-label". They pretty much diagnose and apply known / standard treatments. I surmise a combination of the legal system and insurance companies have pretty much tied doctors' creative problem-solving hands.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:42PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:42PM (#1009170)

      That said, my experience and observation of the medical world is they're mostly unwilling to try things "off-label".

      I'll counter your anecdote with other anecdotes. The impression from others (luckily I've had no direct experience, either ways) is that individual doctors are very willing and eager to prescribe things off-label, especially if a patient asks for it. And I guarantee "Big Pharma" would be happy to sell you anything you want, so long as you don't sue them for the consequences.

      If you are saying that regulators are not willing to, then yes. (Not that I begrudge them... people are willing to buy and sell snake oil, so having somebody keep an official line is fine.) However, "medical world" as a whole isn't really that much against off-label.

      • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:09PM (1 child)

        by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:09PM (#1009225)

        Thank you for your observations. The situations I'm referring to are mostly with my (now deceased) elderly parents who were in great shape otherwise (still driving well, etc.), and some other elderly people. Since COVID-19 is generally a much bigger problem for elderly, I think my observations are at least worthy of expressing to maybe help someone who might be fairly naive to medical care mechanisms.

        My purpose in taking time and mental effort to write on this SoylentNews blog isn't because I like finger exercise or want to be heard or want to be a "topper" or want wearisome verbal battle. It's to hopefully help just 1 person somewhere. I try to give info that might help someone be more aware of potential problems somewhere.

        To your point, I know directly that doctors, PAs, NPs, etc., all want to do as much as they can. But they've expressed directly to me that their hands are tied, esp. in hospital settings. In some of the cases, they kind of hinted that if I could bring the elder to them outside of the hospital, they'd run the tests / give the treatment. In a couple of cases I basically did that- took mom or dad (or aunt or friend's mom) to another facility and got the treatment. It was usually under a multi-hospital medical corporation, and the elder was too sick and considered too fragile to take any risks of "off-label" treatments, and the courses of action were always very by-the-book.

        It's a sore subject for me as I consider talking to lawyers. Both parents died of treatable illnesses, but weren't getting timely treatment, let alone the many possible treatments that could have given them more years.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:54PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:54PM (#1009265)

          Sorry for your loss. If you can wring value from the broken system, using the tools of the broken system, wring for all you can. If you can't... more condolences.