Inexpensive steroids reduce deaths of hospitalized Covid-19 patients, WHO analysis confirms

From Stat News.com (Sept. 2):

Use of inexpensive, readily available steroid drugs to treat people hospitalized with Covid-19 reduced the risk of death by one-third, according to an analysis encompassing seven different clinical trials conducted by the World Health Organization and published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The positive steroid findings — the result of a pooled look at data known as a meta-analysis — confirm a similar survival benefit reported in June from a single, large study. Corticosteroids are the first, and so far only, therapy shown to improve the odds of survival for critically ill patients with Covid-19.

Based on the newly published data, the WHO on Wednesday issued new treatment guidelines calling for corticosteroids to become the standard of care for patients with “severe and critical” Covid-19. Such patients should receive 7-10 days of treatment, a WHO panel said. But it cautioned against use of the steroids in patients with non-severe illness, saying that “indiscriminate use of any therapy for COVID-19 would potentially rapidly deplete global resources and deprive patients who may benefit from it most as potentially life-saving therapy.”

“The consistent findings of benefit in these studies provide definitive data that corticosteroids should be first-line treatment for critically ill patients with COVID-19,” said Hallie Prescott and Todd Rice, professors of medicine at the University of Michigan and Vanderbilt University, respectively, in an accompanying JAMA editorial. [read more]

Another article about steroids:

Steroids are life-saving for critically ill COVID-19 patients, WHO says