Given the drug’s ability to reduce deaths among patients on
ventilators and on oxygen, is dexamethasone a promising COVID 19 cure?
By: Ringo Bones
Given that a working COVID 19 vaccine is probably still
months away, this “miracle drug” is already widely available around the world for
years. Primarily used to reduce inflammation in a range of conditions caused by
an overactive immune system like arthritis, asthma and some skin conditions and
an added bonus that the drug is not astronomically expensive when as little as
UK£5
per patient could save a patient on a ventilator or on oxygen due to COVID 19,
dexamethasone was recently labeled as a “miracle drug” after the anti-inflammatory
drug showed promising results after being tested as part of the world’s biggest
trial of existing treatments to see if they could also work against
coronavirus.
In a trial led by a team from Oxford University, about 2,000
hospital patients were given dexamethasone and compared with more than 4,000 who
were not. For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40-percent
to 28-percent. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from
25-percent to 20-percent. The researchers said this was equivalent to one life
being saved for every eight patients on a ventilator and one life being saved
for every 20 to 25 patients being treated with oxygen. Chief investigator Prof.
Peter Horby said it was “the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce
mortality – and reduce it significantly.”
UK Heath Secretary Matt Hancock told the commons that
240,000 doses of the drug are in stock and on order. Dexamethasone works by
dampening down the reaction of the body’s immune system to COVID 19, which can
often be more harmful than the virus itself. And given the initial results of
the trial, some experts even said that COVID 19 deaths in the UK could have
been cut by half of the June 16, 2020 total of 42, 153 if UK hospitals started
using dexamethasone by the beginning of March 2020.
