Dexamethasone, a steroid that is cheap and widely-used, has been shown as a “major breakthrough” in the fight against the coronavirus, Reuters reported. A test of the drug showed that it reduced deaths from COVID-19 by one third in the most severely-ill patients.
Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor, and his team co-led the RECOVERY trial in which the drug was tested on severely-ill patients who had been admitted to the hospital. Specifically, the team studied the results of the treatment of 6,400 hospitalized patients. Among them, 2,100 were randomly selected to receive the common steroid, while the remaining 4,300 patients did not get it.
On Tuesday, Landray’s team announced that, among patients who were so severely ill that they had to be placed on ventilators, the drug was successful in saving one in three lives.
“This is a result that shows that if patients who have COVID-19 and are on ventilators or are on oxygen are given dexamethasone, it will save lives,” he said.
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