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Life-Saving Coronavirus Drug 'Major Breakthrough'

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

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:51AM (#1009056)

    Did new information come out on remdesivir come out that I missed? The studies I have seen so far showed that it helped people get over SARS-nCoV-2 sooner but did not lower mortality.

    https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/22/covid-19-study-details-benefits-of-treatment-with-remdesivir-and-also-its-limitations/ [statnews.com]

    The study of 1,063 patients included 538 who received remdesivir and 521 who were given a placebo. Those who received remdesivir recovered in a median of 11 days, compared to 15 days for those who received placebo. Mortality in the remdesivir group was 7.1%, compared to 11.9% for the placebo group, but this difference was not statistically significant. This is slightly better than previous results.

    Among patients who scored a 4, there was a 38% benefit in the speed of recovery. Among those who scored 5, there was a 47% benefit. But that benefit fell to 20% among those who scored a 6, meaning they were receiving high-flow ventilation, and a decrease of 0.05% among those who scored a 7, meaning they were intubated or on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Until more data are available, doctors and researchers are likely to debate whether to use remdesivir in sicker patients.

    Not understanding HOW this drugs works is kind of dangerous when you claim you know how it works. Hint: it works by prevent virus from replicating. And virus doesn't kill you, a slow cytokine storm kills you. Remdesivir prevents the disease from getting there. The alternative is you filter you blood for excess cytokines.

    https://cytosorb-therapy.com/en/ [cytosorb-therapy.com]