{"id":142,"date":"2020-10-06T23:21:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-06T23:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=142"},"modified":"2020-11-08T23:23:16","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T23:23:16","slug":"what-is-the-story-with-dexamethasone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"What is the story with dexamethasone?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Question: <\/strong>What is the story with dexamethasone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answer:<\/strong> Dexamethasone is making a lot of news as a component of the drug therapy recently given to the President. Dexamethasone is a potent, long-lasting (24 hours) corticosteroid that is approximately 25x more potent than hydrocortisone<\/a>. The main mechanism that corticosteroids are thought to help reduce COVID severity is that they reduce inflammation by tamping down the immune system so that it doesn\u2019t attack itself (a la the cytokine storm we\u2019ve learned about). Many questions still abound with regard to dexamethasone, but two recent studies \u2014 a clinical trial out of the UK<\/a> and a meta-analysis conducted by the WHO<\/a> \u2014 both indicate that dexamethasone can improve outcomes for patients with severe COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on current evidence, WHO strongly recommends<\/a> \u201cfor systemic (i.e. intravenous or oral) corticosteroid therapy (e.g. 6 mg of dexamethasone orally or intravenously daily or 50 mg of hydrocortisone intravenously every 8 hours) for 7 to 10 days in patients with severe and critical COVID-19\u2026\u201d and WHO also makes a conditional recommendation<\/a> \u201cnot to use corticosteroid therapy in patients with nonsevere COVID-19.\u201d As to non-severe COVID-19, one of the major concerns is that if given corticosteroids too early, the immune system could be hampered from doing its job and the patient would have a harder time fighting the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, if you want to read more, this JAMA<\/em> editorial <\/a>gives a good, brief run-down of the evidence and outstanding questions; this piece published in The Conversation<\/em><\/a> gives a good overview of corticosteroids and COVID-19; and this Q&A from WHO<\/a> gives more bite-sized information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: What is the story with dexamethasone? Answer: Dexamethasone is making a lot of news as a component of the drug therapy recently given to the President. Dexamethasone is a potent, long-lasting (24 hours) corticosteroid that is approximately 25x more potent than hydrocortisone. The main mechanism that corticosteroids are thought to help reduce COVID severity is that they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[67],"tags":[76,75],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-treatment","tag-corticosteriods","tag-dexamethason","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/October-7.jpg?fit=300%2C168&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}