Life Saving Dexamethasone found to tame Cytokine Storm in COVID-19 patients on oxygen.
GOOD NEWS: The UK has just announced the first worldwide scientifically proven life-saving medication for Coronavirus.
It is a cheap drug called DEXAMETHASONE.
It is proven to save 1 life for every 8 patients on ventilator. And it will save 1 life for every 25 patients on oxygen.
Dexamethasone is part of the world’s biggest trial testing of existing drugs to see if they can also work for coronavirus.
If the drug had been used to treat patients in the UK from the start of the pandemic, 5,000 lives could have been saved today, according to UK researchers.
About 19 out of 20 patients with coronavirus recover without being admitted to hospital.
Of those who are admitted, most also recover but some people may need oxygen or a ventilator.
And these very sick patients are the high-risk patients that dexamethasone is proven to help.
The real good news here is that dexamethasone is cheap and widely available all over the world.
The drug is a steroid that helps reduce inflammation. It is already being used to reduce inflammation in a range of medical conditions, including arthritis and some skin conditions.
The research was done by Oxford University. About 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and compared with 4,000 who were not.
For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%.
For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.
Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: “This is the only drug so far that is shown to reduce mortality and deaths from Coronavirus– and it reduces it quite significantly. This is a major breakthrough.”
How it works
Dexamethasone has been discovered to minimize the deadly cytokine storm triggered by coronavirus in COVID-19 patients that are on oxygen (intubation). When the body is invaded by the virus, in order to protect itself, the mobilized immune system sometimes go into overdrive ,causing destruction in its wake and harming the host (patient). Cytokine stone has been said to be partly the reason for the high COVID deaths. Some people are however, genetically predisposed to cytokine storm than others.
Apart from dexamethasone, other drugs that are currently undergoing clinical trials for the treatment of cytokine storm include: anakinra (Kineret), emapalumab (Gamifant), tocilizumab (Actemra), and sarilumab (Kevzara).
Sources
Dr Olufuilayo
BBC
