Oxford University study concludes that Dexamethasone reduces mortality in the most seriously ill

It's the greatest advance in the fight against the coronavirus... or so defined by at least experts in the United Kingdom. This is Dexamethasone, an inexpensive and globally available drug that, according to a University of Oxford study, can help save the lives of patients with severe respiratory problems caused by coronavirus. These researchers have advanced that if the product, an anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant, had been available and in use since the beginning of the pandemic in those patients in the worst situation, nearly 5,000 lives would have been saved in British countries alone.

The research team believes that treatment with low-dose steroids represents a great advance in the fight against COVID-19, reducing the risk of death in a third of those patients who are on ventilators and in a fifth those who require extra oxygen. In addition, because of its low cost, they believe that it could be very beneficial in poor countries facing large numbers of VICD-19 sufferers. In pharmaceutical and medical portals you can find it at a low price, as for example from 2 euros in the Health portal of the Region of Murcia.

This medicine is one of those being used in what is considered the largest clinical trial in the world, where existing treatments for other conditions are being tested to see if they also work to combat the coronavirus. This clinical trial involved about 2,000 hospital patients, who were given the medicine and their progress was compared with 4,000 other patients who were not prescribed it.

Fernando Simón also valued the study and the use of this drug: "The Oxford University study is part of a very large study called Recovery. The WHO used hydroxychloroquine as a possible drug in a recent work; this is similar but with dexamethasone. It is already used to treat many diseases in a compassionate way, but doing a clinical trial that tests its beneficial effect is important and confirms the hypotheses that already existed. This encourages us to use it more than is already the case," added the director of the Health Alert and Emergency Coordination Centre.

Dexamethasone is already being used to reduce infections in the case of other medical conditions, and it seems to help stop some of the damage that occurs when the immune system is overactivated while trying to fight the coronavirus. Approximately 19 out of 20 patients who become infected with coronavirus improve without having to be hospitalized, the study recalls, and of those who require hospitalization the majority also recover without the need for forceful treatment.

For those patients connected to mechanical ventilators, Dexamethasone reduced the risk of death from 40 to 28%, while for those patients requiring oxygen, the treatment reduced the risk of death from 25 to 20%. "This is the only drug to date that has been shown to reduce mortality and reduce it significantly. It's a major breakthrough," said the study's lead researcher, Peter Horby. For Martin Landray, another of the scientists involved, the findings suggest that for every eight patients treated who require mechanical ventilation, one life could be saved.

"There is a clear benefit. The treatment consists of ten days of Dexamethasone and costs about 5 pounds (5.5 euros/6.2 dollars) per patient. So it essentially costs £35 (38 euros/43 dollars) to save a life. It's a drug that's available all over the globe," Landray said. According to the experiment, Dexamethasone does not appear to help people who have mild symptoms of coronavirus-those who do not need breathing assistance. The trial has been running since last March, and the product used to treat malaria, hydroxychloroquine, has also been included in these tests. It has now been discarded for fear that it will increase the number of deaths and coronary problems.