Random assigned study out of Oxford reported today, not peer reviewed or published yet but it will be. They said dexamethasone (common steroid) given to sick and very sick Covid-19 patients cuts mortality by up to 1/3. Actually the East Virginia Medical School protocol has been suggesting steroids for the inflammatory autoimmune phase of serious illness for quite some time, but it's nice to have a random trial to confirm it.
I was a little surprised that the MedCram doc at UC Riverside was not using steroids for all his sick patients, since he's been posting a lot about the serious phase being endothelial inflammation, and steroids would be one obvious treatment for that. He said WHO said not to use steroids a while back, but now with this study I suspect a lot of docs will use them. WHO has said a lot of stuff that later turns out to be wrong, but the docs have had to learn as they go.
I think this is more support for the theory that says the virus causes serious oxidative stress, resulting in superoxide and hydrogen peroxide which attacks the endothelium (lining of the blood vessels). This releases some super clotting stuff call Von Willibrand's Factor (VWF) that forms long chains to build blood clots. All the serious lung, heart, and other organ failure is caused by those micro-clots clogging the capillaries.
NAC can steer the immune system away from inflammation, reduce those oxygen radicals, and breakup VWF chains. Speaking of Ayurvedic Medicine, curcumin is actually a pretty powerful antioxidant. It would be worth looking into.
One of the more interesting things to come out of this, is that many of these treatments and prophylactics are not SARS-COV2 specific. They might work against other viruses as well. For example, they know about NAC for what it does for flu patients. It does not have any effect on who catches flu, but it makes it much less serious. Worth having it around in the future, and you can buy it over-the-counter.
