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Dexamethasone and COVID-19
Dexamethasone and COVID-19
By: Kandharika Bamrungketudom
A recent study performed in the UK as part of the RECOVERY trial, or the Randomized Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy trial — the largest trial testing for drugs that would treat COVID-19, has found that the drug dexamethasone reduces COVID-19 deaths in critically ill patients. This is very groundbreaking, since dexamethasone is the first drug that has shown the properties of increasing chances of survival in COVID-19 patients.
Unlike remdesivir, a fairly new drug that has shown to also be helpful towards COVID-19 recovery, dexamethasone is a rather old drug that has been used to treat other diseases in the past. Dexamethasone has been used since the 1960s and is classified as a glucocorticosteroid drug. It has been used to treat inflammatory disorders, to prevent allergic reactions, to treat certain autoimmune diseases and to treat some forms of cancer.
The trial was led by a team from Oxford University with 6000 total patients. Two thousand of the patients were given dexamethasone (6 milligrams per day for 10 days, either as a tablet or injected intravenously), while 4000 of them were not. Results show that the death rates for patients on ventilators reduced from 40% to 28%, while the death rates for patients needing oxygen reduced from 25% to 20%. This means that the drug dexamethasone saves 1 life for every 8 patients on a ventilator and 1 life for every 25 patients needing extra oxygen.
In patients that are critically infected with the coronavirus, their immune system may “go overboard” in its responses and this brings harm to the human body. When infected with a pathogen, proteins called cytokines are released to raise immune activities. When too much of these are released, the immune system is raised too far and may start attacking one’s own body instead of defending it. The flooding of the level of cytokine is called a “cytokine storm.” Dexamethasone helps stop some of this damage in the immune system.
The drug dexamethasone is also fairly cheap (around 5 pounds), globally available and the treatment lasts up to only 10 days.
However, it should be warned that people should not go to drug stores and buy this to use on their own without a doctor’s prescription. This is because for the majority of the infected patients who are only mildly affected with COVID-19, the drug would not prove to be effective and may even cause harm, since the drug works to dampen the overactive immune system. When used in patients with a normal immune response, this may cause them to have too low of a response to fight off the virus.
More research also has to first be put into the drug dexamethasone to determine whether this drug could really be used as a treatment for critically ill patients infected with COVID-19 or not.
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