First steroid drug hailed as major breakthrough in COVID-19 check

LONDON: Britain will immediately start giving dexamethasone to coronavirus patients, after a trial showed the steroid saved the lives of one third of the gravest cases, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Tuesday.

Hancock said Britain began stockpiling the widely available drug when its potential first became apparent three months ago. "Because we spotted the early signs of the potential of dexamethasone, we´ve been stockpiling it since March," he said in a video statement. "So we now have 200,000 courses that are ready to go and we´re working with the NHS (National Health Service) so that the NHS standard treatment for COVID-19 will include dexamethasone form this afternoon," Hancock said.

The research published on Tuesday was led by a team from the University of Oxford and partially funded by the British government.

Hancock expressed thanks to the "brilliant scientists" at Oxford. "UK life sciences are leading the world in vaccine development, in the development of treatments and in immunology," he said.

Researchers led by a team from the University of Oxford administered the widely available drug to more than 2,000 severely ill COVID-19 patients. Among those who could only breathe with the help of a ventilator, dexamethasone reduced deaths by 35 percent, and by one-fifth in other patients receiving oxygen only, according to preliminary results.

Normally used to treat a range of allergic reactions as well as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma, dexamethasone is an anti-inflammatory.

Daily doses of the steroid could prevent one in eight ventilated patient deaths and save one out of every 25 patients requiring oxygen alone, the team said. The trial included a control group of 4,000 patients who did not receive the treatment.

"Dexamethasone is the first drug to be shown to improve survival in COVID-19. This is an extremely welcome result," said Peter Horby, professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford. "Dexamethasone is inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save lives worldwide."

The trial results are particularly promising as around 40 percent of COVID-19 patients who require a ventilator end up dying, often because of the body´s uncontrolled inflammatory response to the virus.

"This is a major breakthrough: dexamethasone is the first and only drug that has made a significant difference to patient mortality for COVID-19," said Nick Cammack, COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator Lead at the Wellcome Trust health charity. "Potentially preventing one death in every eight ventilated patients would be remarkable."

The trial showed dexamethasone to be ineffective in treating patients with milder forms of COVID-19, however. A number of existing drugs have been trialled as a treatment against the novel coronavirus, with mixed results.

Trials of treatment of anti-arthritis drug hydroxychloroquine were halted in several countries after a major study in The Lancet medical journal suggested it showed no benefit among COVID-19 patients and even increased the risk of death. That study has since been retracted.

Remdesivir, an anti-viral that appears to reduce the length of treatment in some patients is already being used in Britain, but one study in April showed it had "no clinical benefit".

The fact that an existing, cheap and largely side-effect free medication has been shown to be effective in severe COVID-19 cases is "of tremendous importance", according to Stephen Griffin, associate professor in the School of Medicine, University of Leeds.

"There is now realistic scope for further improving the clinical management of this devastating disease," said Griffin, who was not involved in the study.