I have been taking a version this drug (prednisone) for 25 years for an autoimmune disorder/inflammation and am very familiar with it. It's the strongest, anti inflammation drug known to mankind. Side effects are minimal when used short term..........which would be the case for patients trying to recover from COVID, especially in life threatening situations.

Taken long term, there are numerous side affects that a COVID patient or doctor would not be concerned with.

We will see if additional studies confirm these results. This drug has been around forever with very widespread use(my wife has taken it numerous times for things like severe poison ivy, and bronchitis).

Common Steroid Could Be Cheap and Effective Treatment for Severe COVID-19

The results of a trial that found dexamethasone reduced the risk of death in extremely ill coronavirus patients have yet to be published, but some doctors are already embracing them

By Tanya Lewis on June 17, 2020

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/common-steroid-could-be-cheap-and-effective-treatment-for-severe-covid-19/

"On Tuesday headlines around the world hailed a common steroid drug as a “breakthrough” treatment for the most severe cases of coronavirus—based on findings from a large, randomized controlled trial in the U.K. The findings, announced in a press release, have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. But experts say there is good reason for optimism.
“This is a major, major breakthrough. I cannot overstate how important this is,” says Sam Parnia, an associate professor of medicine and director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone Health. He cautions that neither he nor his colleagues have seen a published manuscript, but notes, “this is coming from very reputable group, with a very large sample size.”
The Randomized Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy (RECOVERY) trial involved 2,104 people hospitalized for the illness who were randomly assigned to receive the common corticosteroid drug dexamethasone. The medication is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory conditions. A control group of 4,321 patients received only standard care. The drug reduced deaths by one third among patients on ventilators and by one fifth among those receiving oxygen therapy alone. It did not have any benefit for patients who did not need breathing support. The findings suggest that the steroid treatment would prevent one death for every eight ventilated patients or one death for every 25 patients getting oxygen therapy, the researchers say.
Given the pace at which science has been moving—and the fact that a number of highly touted “treatments” have since been withdrawn from use because they were found to be ineffective or harmful—there is good reason to proceed with caution. Corticosteroids are hormones that are often used to suppress inflammation. But they can sometimes have serious side effects. If they are given too soon in the course of an infection—or given to someone with only a mild infection—they could prevent the body’s own immune system from fighting the virus effectively. Some studies have used corticosteroids to treat other coronaviruses including SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) or MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), and found they were not very effective, says Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa. “The [new] data needs to be peer reviewed and carefully analyzed.”
But unlike the new study, the SARS and MERS studies were not all randomized, controlled trials, and the data were not as high-quality. At least one small study of corticosteroid treatment for COVID-19, published in May in Clinical Infectious Diseases, found it improved clinical outcomes in moderate to severe cases. And doctors in many hospitals have been giving their patients steroids and noting anecdotal improvements.

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Re: Common Steroid is Treatment for Severe COVID-19?

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By metmike - June 18, 2020, 12:36 p.m.

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What's interesting is that if the anti inflammatory affects of this steroid drug are what treats COVID, why wouldn't hydroxychloroquine work?

It's also taken by people like me with autoimmune disorders because it treats inflammation.

I'm not saying that hydroxychloroquine works, just that if it doesn't(which seems to be the case based on some earlier, possibly unreliable studies), there is more going on here than what the main affect of both drugs is.

Common Steroid Could Be Cheap and Effective Treatment for Severe COVID-19

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