Fresh studies give more information about what treatments do or don’t work for COVID-19, with high-quality methods that give reliable results.
British researchers published on Friday their studies on the survival-enhancing drug, a reasonable steroid called dexamethasone.
Two other studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial medicine, does not affect others with mild symptoms.
For months before studies like these, learning what is helping or the night has been weakened through the science of depression, as doctors and patients themselves tried treatments or through a series of studies that were strong enough to give transparent responses.
For the picture to progress and patient outcomes to improve, less small or inconclusive and more like the British will be needed, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. H Clifford Lane of the New England National Institutes of Health wrote. Medical journal.
Now is the time to do more studies comparing remedies and combinations of evidence, said Dr. Peter Bach, a fitness policy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Here are the highlights of the advances in treatment:
The British study, led by oxford University, tested a type of steroid widely used to decrease inflammation, which can be severe and fatal in the latter stages of COVID-19.
About 2,104 patients given the drug were compared to 4,321 patients getting usual care.
Reduced the number of deaths in patients in poor health enough to require a breathing apparatus by 36%: 29% of drugs died compared to 41% of the same previous care. Reduced the death threat by 18% for patients who only needed an oxygen supplement: 23% of the drug died compared to 26% of the others.
However, it appears to be destructive at an early level or in milder cases of disease: 18% of those being treated have died compared to 14% of those receiving normal care.
The clarity of who benefits and who will not lead to many saved lives, Fauci and Lane wrote.
The same Oxford test also rigorously tested hydroxychloroquine and researchers in the past stated that it did not help patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
After 28 days, approximately 25.7% of patients receiving hydroxychloroquine died compared to 23.5% who received the same care above, a difference so small that it may have happened by chance. Patients who received hydroxychloroquine were less likely to leave the hospital alive within 28 days: 60% in treatment compared to 63% who received normal care. Those who did not want breathing apparatus at the beginning of the remedy were also more likely to take one or die.
Two other experiments showed that the early remedy with the drug did not help outpatients with mild COVID-19.
An examination of 293 other people in Spain published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases did not find a significant difference in reducing the number of patients inflamed with the virus, the threat of worsening and the need for hospitalization, or recovery time.
A similar study by University of Minnesota doctors in Annals of Internal Medicine of 423 mildly ill COVID-19 patients found that hydroxychloroquine did not substantially reduce symptom severity and brought more side effects.
It’s time to avoid treating patients with this drug, Dr. Neil Schluger of New York Medical College wrote in an observation in the journal.
The only other remedy that has been shown to help patients with COVID-19 is remdesivir, an antiviral that shortens hospitalization by an average of about 4 days.
The role of remdesivir in severe COVID is now what we need to figure out, Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Bach wrote in an email, saying the drug needs to be tested in combination with dexamethasone now.
Details of the government’s review of remdesivir have still been published, but researchers are eager to see how many patients have gained other drugs, such as steroids and hydroxychloroquine.
Meanwhile, Gilead Sciences, the company that manufactures remdesivir, which is now administered intravenously, has begun testing an inhaled edition that would allow fewer COVID-19 patients to be tested to prevent them from being healthy enough to want it. Hospitalization.
Gilead also began testing remdesivir in a small children’s organization.
Supplies are very limited and the U.S. government. He’s assigning doses to hospitals until September.
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