The drug is reducing deaths in severe cases of the coronavirus.
No one has a surefire treatment for the novel coronavirus yet. Thankfully, many are said to be working on one, and some of the creative solutions that have popped up are possibly having a positive effect, on a case-by-case basis. There are precautions to take, of course. Trump is said to be ingesting an anti-malarial medication called hydroxychloroquine on a regular basis. There is no clinical proof right now that this drug does anything at all to help you avoid COVID-19, and there IS actually evidence that deadly side effects can take place when consuming it outside of hospital settings. The final verdict is as of yet unknown, however, if some portion of this drug can actually be pandemically-useful.
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And there is dexamethasone. This drug is the only reliable potential COVID-19 lifesaver at the moment. It is a corticosteroid that is often used to treat a wide range of illnesses. In general, dexamethasone is an anti-inflammatory medication. It is prescribed to people suffering from severe allergies, arthritis, adrenal problems, asthma, kidney problems, and blood or bone marrow problems. It also helps treat skin conditions, flare-ups associated with multiple sclerosis, and certain cancers. Ironically, dexamethasone works by decreasing your body’s immune response to certain triggers. So, for example, if you are suffering from severe allergies, your body is releasing too much histamine. This is could be causing you to have a reaction such as swelling up, as can happen in anaphylactic shock. By taking this drug, you decrease your body’s natural defense response.
When it comes to treating COVID-19, dexamethasone seems to be doing the same thing. This is excellent news. Patients with a severe case of the virus often are in such a bad state because their body is experiencing a cytokine storm. This happens when your immune system overreacts.
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According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) website, initial clinical trials done on dexamethasone in the UK show that it can be a lifesaver for patients who are critically ill with COVID-19. Patients who were on ventilators fighting the virus showed reduced mortality rates by about one third when they took the drug. Patients who were not on a ventilator but who required oxygen therapy in hospital saw a mortality rate that was reduced by one fifth on dexamethasone. Obviously, it does not work for everyone. It may help, though. Only patients who had a very severe case of COVID-19 were said to benefit from taking dexamethasone.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General was happy to see the positive results.
“This is the first treatment to be shown to reduce mortality in patients with COVID-19 requiring oxygen or ventilator support,” he said. “This is great news and I congratulate the Government of the UK, the University of Oxford, and the many hospitals and patients in the UK who have contributed to this lifesaving scientific breakthrough.”
Dexamethasone has been listed on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines since 1977 in multiple formulations. The great news is that it is currently off-patent and available at an affordable price in many if not most countries.
To date, over half a million people have died from the coronavirus since the pandemic officially began in late December 2019.
photo credit: Tobias Arhelger/Shutterstock.com
