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.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:46PM
20%/25% = 80%, which is a 20% reduction in fatality at this stage.
28%/40% = 70%, which is a 30% reduction in fatality at this (worse) stage.
If a thing prevents death, it makes sense that it would have a greater effect on those closer to death. It would be odd if this drug brought the 40% figure under 20%, as this would imply that it did worse for people that were better, but the data makes plenty of sense. The drug helps people avoid death, the closer to death you are the more it improves your chances, but you are still better off not being close to death in the first place.