This is dexamethasone, the accessible drug that reduces mortality in seriously ill Covid-19 patients

Dexamethasone is a cheap steroid available worldwide. The drug saves one life for every eight patients who require mechanical ventilation, or one for every twenty-five who need oxygen.

Dexamethasone, a low-cost corticosteroid on the market for decades, reduces mortality by up to a third in Covid-19 patients with severe respiratory complications, according to a statement made public this Tuesday by the authors of the Recovery clinical trial (acronym of Randomized Evaluation of Therapy against Covid-19, in English). In this study, the largest on treatments against the disease caused by the coronavirus, more than 11.500 patients recruited in 175 hospitals of the British National Health Service have participated since March in the United Kingdom.

A total of 2.104 patients were randomly chosen to receive a six-milligram dose of dexamethasone once a day, either orally or intravenously, for a period of ten days, explained Recovery's chief researchers, Peter Horby and Martin Landray. . Their evolution was then compared with that of another 4.321 Covid-19 patients, also chosen at random, who underwent standard therapy.

In patients who received the usual treatment, mortality at 28 days was 41% among those who required ventilation, 25% among those who only required oxygen, and 13% among those who did not need any respiratory intervention. That is, dexamethasone reduced deaths by a third among patients with mechanical ventilation and a fifth among those receiving oxygen, with no benefit found in the rest.

Given the preliminary results, the committee responsible for the clinical trial terminated it on June 8, considering that there was already sufficient evidence in favor of the benefits of using the drug, a corticosteroid that is used to treat inflammation and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. With this treatment, one life is saved for every eight patients who need ventilation or for every twenty-five who only need oxygen, highlight those responsible for the project who are already preparing the corresponding publication in a scientific journal.

For "use immediately"

"Dexamethasone is the first drug that has been shown to improve survival against Covid-19," said Horby, professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford and one of the trial coordinators, on Tuesday. In his opinion, "the greatest survival is clear in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen treatment, so dexamethasone should now become the standard of care in these patients." And he added that "it is cheap, it is available and it can be used immediately to save lives around the world."

«Since the appearance of Covid-19 six months ago, treatments have been sought that can improve survival, particularly in the most serious patients. These preliminary results from the Recovery trial are very clear: dexamethasone reduces the risk of death in patients with severe respiratory complications,” agreed Martin Landray, the other scientific coordinator of the initiative. For this professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, also at the University of Oxford, "it is fantastic that the first treatment that has been shown to reduce mortality from Covid-19 is one that is already available and affordable throughout the world."