The discovery of a generic steroid drug to treat patients with Covid-19 is "a really good breakthrough" in efforts to find a treatment for people who are very sick with the coronavirus, according to Dr Anne Moore, a senior Lecturer in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at University College Cork.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Dr Moore said that dexamethasone is the first drug found to prevent death in some people who are on ventilators.
She added that it was not much of a surprise to find the anti-inflammatory, broad spectrum drug works, but it was great to see that it did.
However, she warned that people at home should not treat themselves with dexamethasone and it is only to be used when people are extremely ill and the immune system has gone out of control.
Dr Moore said it is a very potent drug that suppresses the immune system.
She said there is good statistical confidence around the trial results and the results are "pretty transparent".
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was moving to update its guidelines on treating people with Covid-19 to reflect results of the clinical trial.
Dexamethasone has been used since the 1960s to reduce inflammation in diseases such as arthritis.
Trials showed it cut death rates by around a third among the most severely ill Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital.
"This is the first treatment to be shown to reduce mortality in patients with Covid-19 requiring oxygen or ventilator support," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
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"This is great news and I congratulate the government of the UK, the University of Oxford, and the many hospitals and patients in the UK who have contributed to this lifesaving scientific breakthrough."
The researchers shared initial insights about the results of the trial with WHO, "and we are looking forward to the full data analysis in the coming days," it said.
"WHO will coordinate a meta-analysis to increase our overall understanding of this intervention."
The WHO's clinical guidance for treating patients infected with the new coronavirus is aimed at doctors and other medical professionals and seeks to use the latest data to inform clinicians on how best to tackle all phases of the disease, from screening to discharge.
Although the dexamethasone study's results are preliminary, the researchers behind the project said it suggests the drug should become standard care in severely ill patients.
For patients on ventilators, the treatment was shown to reduce mortality by about one third, and for patients requiring only oxygen, mortality was cut by about one fifth, according to preliminary findings shared with WHO.
The benefit was only seen in patients seriously ill with Covid-19 and was not observed in patients with milder disease.
Additional reporting Reuters
