The United Kingdom is excited to announce the discovery of a “magic medicine” for the treatment of COVID-19. Just a few hours ago, the British Prime Minister’s Office posted a post on Twitter, saying that the University of Oxford in the UK has developed a “new treatment” for corona virus, which can effectively reduce death rate. This treatment involved immediately promoted by the British government through the British medical insurance system. Britain Prime Minister Boris Johnson also expressed with excitement in a video “This is an extraordinary achievement of British science”. But the treatment and its medication are not new to Chinese. As shown in the video distributed in the post, this “new therapy” called “extraordinary achievement” of British science by the Office of the British Prime Minister is dexamethasone… Yes, that is the glucocorticoid drug dexamethasone that China had to use in large doses in order to save the lives of critically ill patients in the SARS outbreak nearly 20 years ago.
During the outbreak of corona virus, some Chinese medical institutions have already used dexamethasone to save the lives of critically ill patients. This hormone can overcome the difficulties by suppressing the body’s immune system and preventing severe patients from suffering from “immune storm” damage to their own organs. However, this kind of hormone therapy, which is regarded as a “double-edged sword”, was used in large doses to save the lives of critically ill patients during SARS, and some patients subsequently suffered serious side effects such as osteonecrosis. Chinese medical experts are also very careful when using this hormone, setting a lot of strict restrictions. However, judging from the available information, this “therapy” has not been officially released by Oxford University in the UK and has not been peer-reviewed, but has been widely reported and admired by the British government and the media. Oxford University declared in a “news release” (not a thesis) about the clinical trial of this therapy that they divided more than 6,000 patients with COVID-19 into two groups for comparison. One group of 2000 people used dexamethasone, and another 4000 group does not use dexamethasone. Then the researchers gave more than 2,000 people using dexamethasone 6 mg a day for 10 days, and then compared with the other 4,000 people, found that this hormone therapy can reduce the mortality of critically ill patients who need a ventilator by three points. First, it can reduce the mortality of critically ill patients who require oxygen inhalation by one-fifth, but it has no effect on mild patients who have not developed oxygen. “Based on these results, this therapy can prevent one death in every eight patients who need a ventilator or every 25 patients who need oxygen,” the news release wrote. In other words, the more serious the condition, the more effective this treatment. In addition to these “preliminary” conclusions that do not give specific data, this press release issued by Oxford University also highlights such a concept in its title and text:”This is not only the first to be found to improve the survival of people with new corona virus Rate drugs, and this drug is cheap and easy to obtain. It is available everywhere and should be used immediately to save lives.” But neither the BBC report nor the Oxford University press release mentions the “side effects”.
The CNN of the United States asked this situation when interviewing the relevant researchers, and the answers obtained were “no serious side effects were reported” and “no obvious side effects were found.” Even so, the excitement of the American media for this discovery does not seem to be as strong as the British media. Among them, the “New York Times” in the United States has repeatedly pointed out in its report that many American doctors are still very worried about the side effects of dexamethasone. Many experts also called for caution on this “preliminary clinical result” and asked Oxford University to take Detailed data. The New York Times stated that this caution was due to the fact that in the past period of time, some researchers have been “eager to achieve success” in the study of COVID-19.
Source from: https://news.sina.com.cn/w/2020-06-18/doc-iircuyvi9047220.shtml