I think that might have been a mistake. It did reduce the public grabbing critical N95 masks, but even improvised masks could have slowed the spread, and now itâs harder to get everyone to take masking up seriously.
Interesting.
Been using dexamethasone on and off since ever. Mostly to unclog my sinuses at night when having a cold, or in case of severe hay fever. Low concentrations, as few applications as possible.
Interesting they hype it that way. I expect that it wonât be the miracle drug. (But hey, I like positive surprises!)
Those results look good, but hardly match up with the headline. Still, every bit helps.
Interesting. Prednisolone is another steroid used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and asthma. The NHS is recommending that users of low doses of prednisolone (5-20 mg) should bump up their dosage to 20 mg daily if they show symptoms of Covid-19.
Is this the same mechanism as dexamethasone? Can any doctors here comment?
Itâs a bit of a surprise in to me this is ânewsâ. Corticosteroids helpful against inflammation?
Who would have thought!?!?
SCNR. Will not look at that later, exhausted.
No see, those dying with the virus are doing it wrong!
A huge mistake, because N95 masks arenât what we need: N95 masks donât stop infected people from spreading Trumpvirus at all, they only protect the user, while simple cloth masks actually do prevent that. And while we continue to learn how effective they are at that, went always known that they were better than nothing, so we should have always been using them.
IMPORTANT.
The study looked at using the drug on critically ill patients in an ICU setting. There is no evidence that the drug is beneficial outside of that setting.
This has to be said before idiots start self-medicating or stockpiling and stopping the drug from getting to where it would actually be useful.
That explains why virus stats in the local paper started including ârecoveredâ a few months ago. They printed it next to the figures for total cases and deaths. Of course, they also excluded figures about testing and percentage of the population.
Prednisolone is the pure drug, while Prednisone is what is often prescribed and needs to be processed by the liver to become Prednisolone. Maybe it would be harder for the layman to obtain without being in a hospital setting?
Dexamethasone is cheap, well tolerated and makes sense. If the virusâ primary attack mechanism is inflammation, dex is a very effective anti-inflammatory drug. It is already widely used in sepsis and meningitis and has been shown to save lives there as well. Important to note, this modifies the course of the disease in severely ill patients. Not anywhere near the same as what I would call a âtreatmentâ as such. But good news, nonetheless.
Both are anti-inflammatory corticosteroids, exactly the same mechanism of action. Dex is a little stronger than prednisone, but other than that very very closely related.
Too late.
It cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators. For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by a fifth.
I donât know how those numbers break out: but guesstimating that half of people on oxygen and ventilators die, and the death rate (barring lack of any resources, which would presumably double it or more) would eventually reach 667,000 people in the UK, thatâs 1,334,000 people needing the drug.
The UK government has 200,000 courses of the drug in its stockpile and says the NHS will make dexamethasone available to patients.
Oops.
Self-medicating with corticosteroids is a really, really bad idea. I am old enough to remember the state of steroid-dependent asthmatics, and stopping them after being on for a while is no fun either.
Really bad idea. One thing to try in the ICU to head off death, but you know some yay-hoo will think they should start taking it âjust in case.â
Reminds me of my favorite Dr. Malcolm quote from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, âOh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, thatâs how it always starts. Then later thereâs running and um, screaming.â
Thanks. It had me curious, because I had assumed that prednisone would make one more vulnerable, since itâs an immunosuppressive drug. Yet another reason why Iâm not a doctor.
The NHS pamphlet I linked to is mainly concerned with adrenal insufficiency. They seem to have added the Covid-19 section later.
