In June this year, British medical experts discovered that the ubiquitous drug Dexamethasone could help save the lives of critically ill patients from the new corona virus.
New medical trials have also confirmed that cheap and readily available steroid drugs can help save the lives of patients dying near Covid 19.
Following this confirmation, the World Health Organization (WHO) has now announced that it is strongly advising doctors to use these drugs so that severely or critically ill people can fight the disease.
This new evidence came to light in trials under the auspices of the World Health Organization, which were analyzed in 3 research reports, while 4 control trials were also part of this process.
According to the World Health Organization, these drugs, known as corticosteroids, reduce the risk of near-death patients by up to 20%.
The overall risk of death can be reduced by a third and it was also discovered that another steroid, hydrocortisone, is more helpful than dexamethasone.
"Corticosteroids are currently the only treatment that can reduce the risk of death in patients with COD 19," said Jonathan Stern, of the University of Bristol in the UK, who is part of the World Health Organization's meta-analysis.
"These findings reinforce the evidence that doctors should treat critically ill people with code 19 with these drugs," he said.
In June, British research showed that dexamethasone was the first drug to increase the chances of surviving more than 19 patients with codeine.
Similar benefits have now been demonstrated in new research reports that will increase the confidence of experts who have been using corticosteroids to treat patients since the initial results.
Dr. Drake C. Agnes of the University of Pittsburgh, who is part of a trial of hydrocortisone in eight countries, said: What will happen?
Now the new findings will help eliminate this uncertainty among medical professionals around the world, and Dr. Haley Prescott of the University of Michigan said: Is going to happen.
"At the beginning of the epidemic, we were hesitant to advise against its use," said Janet V. Diaz, head of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Program.
"But the World Health Organization has changed its advice, based on the results of various trials that suggest that if corticosteroids are used, even in the worst-case scenario, there will be 87 fewer deaths per 1,000 patients," he said.
The results of all three trials were published in the medical journal Journal of the American Medical Association, which included patients undergoing code 19 in ICUs around the world.
One trial examined the effects of dexamethasone on 299 patients in Brazil, another in 76 doses of hydrocortisone in France, and a third trial analyzed the use of hydrocortisone in 379 patients in the United States and seven other countries.All three trials were suspended in June following the results of a British study. Dr. Drake C. Agnes said that although these trials could not be called final because they were not completed, they did point in the right direction.
Now the World Health Organization has also acknowledged these findings and suggested their use, but research reports did not answer various questions, such as how to determine the patients for whom these drugs may be helpful.
According to World Health Organization guidelines, Code 19 severely defines patients who need life-sustaining therapies when the severity of ARDS is high. Similarly, people with very low levels of oxygen in the blood and those who are unable to speak can be considered seriously ill.
According to Dr. Drake C. Agnes, although steroids may be helpful for critically ill patients, this does not mean that every patient should be given these drugs, most patients do not need immune-suppressing drugs.
Experts say that steroids may not be helpful to patients with mild or moderate illnesses, while they may have side effects.
Steroid drugs do not attack the virus on their own, but they do reduce the body's immune response, which helps control the edema in severe coronavirus patients.
Steroid medications can also cause side effects such as high blood sugar levels.
WHO experts emphasize that the new clinical guidelines are for doctors, not people.
The WHO's epidemiologist, Maria Vaughan, said the guidelines were not for the general public and could not be used to treat moderately ill people.
Future research reports will determine the duration and dosage of the use of the drug. Work has already begun on a trial in Denmark to analyze the effects of high and low doses of these drugs.
