The hopes for a magic drug are increasing across the world after the UK scientists claiming Dexamethasone, a low-cost and widely used steroid medicine, as a very effective drug to lower the mortality.
According to reports, the medicine widely used to reduce inflammation in other diseases such as arthritis proved to be a major breakthrough drug as it reduced the death rates by a third in the most severely ill Covid-19 patients.
“This is a (trial) 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, and it will do so at a remarkably low cost,” said Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor co-leading the trial, known as the RECOVERY trial.
“For less than 50 pounds ($63), you can treat eight patients and save a life,” he said in an online briefing. One death would be prevented in every 25 COVID-19 patients on oxygen that received the drug, he calculated.
The preliminary results, which have not been peer-reviewed, suggest the drug should immediately become standard care in patients with severe cases of the pandemic disease, said the researchers who led the trials.
Britain’s health ministry, stating that the drug had been approved for use in the state-run health service, has introduced export restrictions and 200,000 courses of the treatment had been stockpiled.
The RECOVERY trial compared outcomes of around 2,100 patients who were randomly assigned to get the steroid, with those of around 4,300 patients who did not get it.
