Is Dexamethasone Finally The Drug For Covid-19? A Look At Medicines That Were Considered As Beneficial

UK scientists have claimed that the steroid drug Dexamethasone has saved up to 5,000 patients infected with the coronavirus. It is perhaps the first drug that has shown such promise, but there were others that were considered before it. Find out which ones.

(FILES) In this file photo taken on February 26, 2020 a medical staff shows at the IHU Mediterranee Infection Institute in Marseille, packets of a Nivaquine, tablets containing chloroquine and Plaqueril, tablets containing hydroxychloroquine, drugs that has shown signs of effectiveness against coronavirus. FILE PIC/AFP

New Delhi: Since the pandemic began, several medicines were a real breakthrough in protecting against the Coronavirus. But over time and after trials, scientists learned that in some cases it was just a false alarm. ALSO READ | Fight Illness And Not The Ill: Stigma Around Covid-19 And How It Can Make Matters Worse Now scientists in the UK as the steroid drug Dexamethasone proved to be a lifesaving drug. Scientists in the UK claim that the steroid drug Dexamethasone has saved up to 5,000 lives in the UK. In a trial run by the Oxford University, about 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and compared with more than 4,000 who were not. The results showed that in patients on ventilators, Dexamethasone cut the risk of death from 40% to 28% while patients needing oxygen the risk of death was cut from 25% to 20%. The drug which is used to reduce inflammation in conditions like arthritis, asthma, and some skin conditions, appears to help stop the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus. It is perhaps the first drug that has shown such promise, but it is not the only drug that was being tested. Here’s a look at the drugs which were (some still are) considered to be beneficial for protection against COVID-19 Remdesvir - Remdesivir was studied in clinical trials for Ebola virus infections but showed limited benefit. It has been shown to inhibit replication of other human coronaviruses associated with high morbidity in tissue cultures, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2003 and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2012. According to the New Indian Express report, a doctor from PGIMER looking after the treatment of COVID-19 patients at the Nehru Extension block explained that the medicine’s use is largely similar to the use of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). “They are both basically antiviral drugs, which are most useful when administered to a patient at the time when the viral load is replicating itself in the patient. This is an early stage of the onset of the disease,” explained Dr. Pankaj Malhotra, from the Department of Internal Medicine at PGI. However, the doctor warned again self-administration of anti-viral drugs as a prophylactic and is only administer is the body’s vitals are optimal. Lopinavir/Ritonavir - The antiretroviral drug lopinavir is a protease inhibitor, which is widely used for the treatment of HIV and is a potential candidate for the treatment of COVID-19. Lopinavir is formulated in combination with another protease inhibitor, ritonavir. Ritonavir inhibits the metabolizing enzyme and therefore increases the half-life of lopinavir. A study published in Lancet this month said a treatment involving a combination of the drugs interferon beta-1b, plus the antiviral combination lopinavir-ritonavir and ribavirin, is better at reducing the viral load or quantity of the virus than lopinavir-ritonavir alone. But these, too, were early findings, observed only in patients with mild to moderate illness, so the scientists behind the study stressed the need for larger trials to examine the effectiveness of this triple combination in critically ill patients. Hydroxychloroquine- has been one of the most controversial drugs throughout the trials. The drug is used mainly to treat malaria, but it also used as a treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Oxford University decided to stop giving its patients HCQ since it showed no significant benefit towards COVID-19 recovery. The trial named RECOVERY was testing various drugs including hydroxychloroquine after finding no real result, the university decided to stop administering the drug to COVID-19 patients. In another study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) raised doubts about the usage of HCQ as a useful preventive measure against COVID-19. "After high-risk or moderate-risk exposure to Covid-19, hydroxychloroquine did not prevent illness compatible with Covid-19 or confirmed infection when used as post-exposure prophylaxis within 4 days after exposure." WHO continues testing the drug in the Solidarity trails after briefly stopping because of a study that claimed potentially harmful effects. Since the drug is widely available and is one of the major manufacturers of the drug, India hasn’t stopped the use of Hydroxychloroquine even though the result so far does not show any effects on Covid-19.