Steroids Can Be Lifesaving for Covid-19 Patients

admin September 4, 2020 Daily Current Affairs

International clinical trials confirm the hope that cheap, widely available steroid drugs can help seriously ill patients survive Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
Based on the new evidence, the World Health Organization issued new treatment guidance, strongly recommending steroids to treat severely and critically ill patients, but not to those with mild disease.
Corticosteroids should now be the first-line treatment for critically ill patients.
The only other drug shown to be effective in seriously ill patients, and only modestly at that, is Remdesivir.
Steroids like dexamethasone, hydrocortisone and methylprednisolone are often used by doctors to tamp down the body’s immune system, alleviating inflammation, swelling and pain.
Many Covid-19 patients die not of the virus, but of the body’s overreaction to the infection.
Steroids can have harmful side effects, especially in elderly patients, who make up the majority of very ill coronavirus patients.
The drugs may leave patients vulnerable to other infections, may raise blood glucose levels, and may cause confusion and delirium.
The analysis of pooled data found that steroids were linked with a one-third reduction in deaths among critically ill Covid-19 patients.
Dexamethasone produced a 36 percent drop in deaths in 1,282 patients treated in three separate trials.