New Delhi (NVI): Treating critically ill COVID-19 patients with steroids reduces the risk of death by 20 per cent, according to an analysis of seven international trials, prompting the World Health Organisation (WHO) to update its advice on treatment.
The analysis – which pooled data from separate trials of low dose hydrocortisone, dexamethasone and methylprednisolone – found that steroids improve survival rates of COVID-19 patients sick enough to be in intensive care in hospital.
The WHO’s clinical care lead, Janet Diaz, said the agency had updated its advice to include a “strong recommendation” for use of steroids in patients with severe and critical COVID-19.
Such patients should receive 7-10 days of treatment, a WHO panel said, cautioning against the use of steroids in patients with nin-severe illness, saying that “indiscriminate use of any therapy for COVID-19would potentially rapidly deplete global resources and deprive the patients who may benefit from it most as potentially life-saving therapy.”
“The evidence shows that if you give corticosteroids …(there are) 87 fewer deaths per 1,000 patients,” she told a WHO social media live event. “Those are lives … saved.”
“Steroids are a cheap and readily available medication, and our analysis has confirmed that they are effective in reducing deaths amongst the people most severely affected by COVID-19,” Jonathan Sterne, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Britain’s Bristol University who worked on the analysis, told the briefing.
The trials – conducted by researchers in Britain, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Spain, and the United States – gave a consistent message throughout, showing the drugs were beneficial in the sickest patients regardless of age or sex or how long patients had been ill.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reinforce results that were hailed as a major breakthrough and announced in June, when dexamethasone became the first drug shown to be able to reduce death rates among severely sick COVID-19 patients.
Dexamethasone has been in widespread use in intensive care wards treating COVID-19 patients in some countries since then.
-CHK
