News | UK
A cheap steroid may have saved the lives of over 650,000 people from Covid-19 - including at least 12,000 from the UK alone, a new study has found.
Dexamethasone was first identified by scientists from the University of Oxford as a treatment for Covid-19
Their large clinical trial
known as Recovery, found that the cheap and widely available steroid could reduce deaths from Covid-19 significantly.
The researchers found that the drug cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators.
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For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by almost a fifth.
The scientists reported their findings last year in June.
Now experts have analysed how many lives have potentially been saved as a result of the treatment between July and December 2020.
The new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, concluded that the use of the treatment had saved 12,000 lives in the UK.
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