Researchers in England say they have the first evidence that a drug can improve COVID-19 survival: A cheap, widely available steroid called dexamethasone reduced deaths by up to one third in severely ill hospitalized patients.
In order for these kinds of tests to have validity, they need to be verified independently by others. Otherwise, it’s hydrochloroquin all over again. Science is not magic.
Science is hope.
While true, I wouldnt discount this result. 35% is a massive number given the number of test subjects and the tests for statistical significance. There would need to be a similarly massive failure in methodology for it to not matter and it sounds like this was an appropriate clinical study as opposed to some of the ridiculous attempts to prove Trump right on hydroxychloroquine with tiny test groups.
After 28 days, it had reduced deaths by 35% in patients who needed treatment with breathing machines and by 20% in those only needing supplemental oxygen. It did not appear to help less ill patients.
So the virus will continue to rage through our population unchecked, but now we might have a medicine that might reduce by roughly one-third the number of people who would otherwise be expected to die while on vents.
Yippee, let’s all go to the MAGA rally!
Markets are loving the news, up 2 to 3 percent.
Great. Now we’ll see a rush to buy steroids because Fox and OANN will be pushing them 24/7!
To your point, if people see this as some kind of indication to start self medicating with steroids like prednisone (easily obtained OTC in Mexico), the effect would be to actually reduce the effectiveness of their immune systems and quite possibly make them more susceptible. This is a welcome but very limited finding about how to treat people in extremis, but that kind of subtlety is completely lost on most non medical people.
Only if someone gets kickbacks (wink, wink).
It seems like all of the things that are claimed to be effective are in that 20-35% range. Which is better than nothing, but not good enough. And we don’t know whether it’s the same 20-35 percent. So maybe we reduce the CFR from 10% to 8%, or 5% to 4%. Which helps the whole pandemic thing not nearly as much as measures that reduce R0.
(I’m thinking in comparison to the early days of antibiotics, where the new medications reduced mortality from 50-90% in many bacterial infections to 1-2%.)
Wait till we face the roulette wheel of a vaccination that is 30-50% effective.
Well DUH!
COVID-19 causes extreme inflammation in the patient’s circulatory system, so any effective Steroid like dexamethasone that is indicated for use in blood/hormone/immune system disorders SHOULD have a positive effect upon the patient survival rates.
Why does this smell like a “pump-and-dump” stock scheme announcement to me?
Dexamethasone has been a standard treatment on and off for Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) for a long time (maybe 30 years, possibly longer), though last time I looked into it, it hadn’t been proven effective to everyone’s satisfaction. Interestingly, the lung problems caused by COVID 19 don’t always fall easily into the ARDS cookie cutter diagnosis and cookie cutter treatments (which was the initial understanding of the problem). As has described here at TPM, standard ARDS treatments may be counter productive w/ Covid 19 driven respiratory failure. What that all means is…whether the steroids help or not is a interesting question that may shed further light on the disease process as well as save lives, or it may turn out to a waste of time. On edit, there is that whole other subject of Disseminated Inter-vascular Coagulation (DIC) like symptoms that have caused strokes in some people (my personal and wholly anecdotal experience is standard DIC doesn’t seem to cause strokes very often) . I don’t know how much mortality is actually related directly to the clotting issue, so that’s another interesting question
.
Amen to that. this seems to work well with those needing lots of oxygen or on ventilators. 2 situations that you really don’t want to find yourself in.
I think dexamethasone is pretty inexpensive and the formula is within the public domain ie can be produced as a generic drug. I guess there’s some money in it but probably not a ton.
besides reducing one’s immune response, steroid like prednisone and dexamethasone also have some other side effects including steroid induced diabetes and mood alterations, so yeah, not a drug to be taken lightly. On edit, they can also cause the dreaded “steroid hump” at the base of one’s neck and bone demineralization leading to cool stuff like having your spine basically turn to dust.
I know that longterm prednisone and similar steroids are often not a good idea, but my impression was that most of the worst effects were avoided by short-term use, which is (one hopes) what covid treatment might be. (I once shared a hospital room with a doctor who had been self-medicating with steroids against various inflammations for 20 years and crashed. It didn’t seem fun at all.)
This is interesting news and could be promising. I listened to a podcast of The Daily from the NY Times recently that covered the case of a teenager who was infected with Covid-19 and nearly died. The doctors tried a kind of a last ditch attempt to help this kid, and used steroids, which had a significant effect within a matter of hours. They apparently then started using steroids with other kids who were admitted with severe symptoms. A Teenager’s Medical Mystery
Also the last bit of the podcast was very touching to listen to for a science teacher like me.
I became acquainted with dexamethasone 6 or 7 years ago when I developed high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) at just over 14,000 ft. I could hear and feel crackling in my lungs due to fluid from inflammation. I was given dexamethasone which cleared my lungs enough for a lengthy evacuation. I carry it now whenever I go into the high country. When I first learned of COVID-19, it was the first medicine that came to mind. I’ve seen references to studies using dexamethasone as a treatment so the only surprise to me is that it’s taken this long to reach this conclusion.
Imagine how much more massive the number would be if they took dexamethasone with a bleach chaser.