{"id":86696,"date":"2020-06-17T06:04:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T11:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=86696"},"modified":"2020-06-17T06:09:02","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T11:09:02","slug":"auto-draft-37","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/06\/17\/auto-draft-37\/","title":{"rendered":"British Announce \u2018Major Breakthrough\u2019 in COVID-19 Treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA \u2014 British scientists announced Tuesday a major coronavirus breakthrough, saying a cheap, readily-available steroid can prevent deaths from COVID-19.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scientists from Britain\u2019s University of Oxford say in a trial the drug dexamethasone reduced death rates by 35% for patients on ventilators, and by 20% for less immediately critical patients needing oxygen.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
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\nPeter\u00a0Horby,\u00a0the\u00a0academic\u00a0leading\u00a0the trial, told a Downing Street press conference, \u201cwhat we saw was really quite remarkable.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0
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\nStanding by his side,\u00a0Prime Minister Boris Johnson\u00a0lauded the trial, hailing it as the \u201cbiggest breakthrough yet\u201d in treating COVID-19.\u00a0\u00a0
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\n\u201cI am proud of these British scientists, backed by UK government funding, who have led the first, robust clinical trial anywhere in the world to find a coronavirus treatment proven to reduce the risk of death,\u201d\u00a0Horby\u00a0said. Johnson added, \u201cwe have taken steps to ensure we have enough supplies, even in the event of a second peak.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>
Britain’s Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty attends a remote press conference to update the nation on the COVID-19 pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street in central London on June 10, 2020.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The country\u2019s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said it is \u201cthe most important trial result for COVID-19 so far.\u201d Scientists across the globe have been racing to find treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, which has sickened more than 8 million people and killed more than 430,000.\u00a0\u00a0
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\nDexamethasone is a generic steroid that\u2019s been used for 60 years to reduce inflammation from a range of other conditions, including arthritis and\u00a0asthma. It is low-cost \u2014 in many parts of the world costing just a dollar for a dosage course. Oxford University scientists tested it as part of a collective effort across the world by commercial labs, pharmaceutical companies and universities to existing drugs to see if any can work for the\u00a0coronavirus.\u00a0\u00a0
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\nIt is \u201cthe only drug that’s so far shown to reduce mortality \u2014 and it reduces it significantly,\u201d said\u00a0Horby.<\/p>\n

Martin\u00a0Landray, a colleague, said: \u201cIt will save lives, and it will do so at a remarkably low cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Oxford\u2019s study 2,104 patients were given the drug and 4,321 weren\u2019t with the outcomes being compared. The university enrolled over 11,500 patients overall to test existing drugs, making it by far the biggest clinical trial in the world.\u00a0\u00a0
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\nThe scientists said for patients on mechanical ventilation, it can reduce the risk of death from 40% to 28%. And for those being given supplemental needing oxygen, it can reduce fatalities from 25 to 20%. The Oxford scientists say if dexamethasone had been used sooner in Britain, it could have saved about 5,000 of the more than 40,000 Britons who so far have died of COVID-19.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nThey say hospital patients should be given it without delay but cautioned it doesn\u2019t seem to help people with milder coronavirus symptoms and who are not having breathing problems.\u00a0\u00a0
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\n\u201cThe survival benefit is clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen treatment, so dexamethasone should now become standard of care in these patients,\u201d said\u00a0Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health.\u00a0\u00a0
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\nThe only other drug proven so far to show some benefits with severely ill patients is\u00a0remdesivir, an anti-viral drug created to fight\u00a0Ebola, which can reduce the duration of bad coronavirus symptoms from 15 to 11 days.<\/p>\n

Oxford\u2019s findings have not yet been peer-reviewed and the researchers\u00a0are\u00a0\u201cnow working to publish the full details as soon as possible.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 British scientists announced Tuesday a major coronavirus breakthrough, saying a cheap, readily-available steroid can prevent deaths from COVID-19.\u00a0 Scientists from Britain\u2019s University of Oxford say in a trial the drug dexamethasone reduced death rates by 35% for patients on ventilators, and by 20% for less immediately critical patients needing oxygen.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Peter\u00a0Horby,\u00a0the\u00a0academic\u00a0leading\u00a0the trial, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}