New drug to get WHO’s nod after full review

NEW DELHI: The World Health Organization (WHO) will update its coronavirus treatment guidelines only after analysing the full data of a UK trial which showed a common steroid that costs only a few rupees in India can help save critically ill Covid-19 patients.

The University of Oxford on Tuesday said that dexamethasone, a generic drug used for more than five decades to treat septic shock, some cancers and rheumatoid arthritis, can prevent the death of severely ill Covid-19

patients on ventilator support, according to initial tests.

“We will update the clinical guidelines soon. A meta-analysis of all steroid studies is being done. We are waiting for the full Recovery trial results before reaching a decision,” Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist, WHO, told HT.

The UN health agency had received flak for suspending hydroxychloroquine arm of its multi-country Solidarity trial based on the results of a study published in The Lancet that found no benefits, which was later retracted. WHO resumed the trial following the retraction.

The dexamethasone trials showed reduced deaths by about one-third in patients on ventilators and by one-fifth for patients on oxygen. Oxford researchers who did the study recommended that the drug be made standard care only in severely ill patients.

The researchers have shared preliminary results with WHO. “We are looking forward to the full data analysis in the coming days,” said WHO.

The WHO’s clinical guidelines inform those treating Covid-19 patients on how best to treat all phases of the disease.

“The news builds off the WHO Research & Development Blueprint

meeting, which took place in Geneva in mid-February... where further research into the use of steroids was highlighted as a priority,” the WHO said.

Steroids are among the drugs approved to treat Covid-19 in India. “We are already using steroids to treat Covid-19 patients with both moderate and mild disease. The only difference is that we are giving methyl-prednisolne and the UK study has used dexamethasone, but they are both steroids,” said Randeep Guleria, director, AIIMS Delhi, who heads the clinical research group in the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) national task force on Covid-19. ICMR has approved three to five days of steroids to treat Covid-19 patients with progressive deterioration of oxygenation indicators, rapid worsening of imaging and acute inflammatory response.

“Dexamethasone is part of the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines since 1977... I want to caution people not to have it without medical supervision as it belongs to the cortisone family, which can lead to side effects,” said Nirmal K Ganguly, former director general, ICMR.