A new study gives hope: does an asthma drug help against the coronavirus?
Initial voices from science sound extremely promising.
Karl Lauterbach is also convinced.
Oxford - is this the turning point in the fight against corona?
A new study has now come to the explosive conclusion that a drug against Covid-19 that has not yet been used to contain viruses could be effective.
This is not a vaccine, but an asthma medicine.
Corona drug: the asthma drug budesonide apparently significantly reduces the risk of Covid
A
study published
in
The Lancet
had shown that patients who inhaled the anti-inflammatory drug budesonide in the early stages of their Covid disease significantly reduced the risk of hospitalization - by up to 90 percent.
In addition, they recovered faster.
According to the researchers, it is important that the agent is administered in the first three days after the first symptoms of the disease.
In addition to asthma, budesonide is also used for hay fever or chronic lung diseases.
It is available in both an inhaler, pill, nasal spray, and rectal form.
With regard to the coronavirus, it is a so-called “off-label” drug.
This means that a drug is used in Covid patients even though there is no approval from the regulatory authority such as the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Corona drug: Lauterbach sees asthma drugs as "game changers"
Experts rate the results as promising.
"The effect described is remarkable and significant," says the director of the clinic for infectious diseases and pneumology at the Berlin Charité, Norbert Suttorp.
The SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach even calls the study a possible "game changer" and writes on Twitter: "The results make clinical sense because the anti-inflammatory effect in the lungs can prevent the lung function from deteriorating." "It works for everyone." There are also hardly any side effects.
Lauterbach had already rated the first results positively in February and said: "If this study were to be confirmed, that would be very significant."
Corona drug budesonide: Expert praises "simple, low-side-effect and cost-effective treatment"
"These are extremely interesting results and plausible from the biological approach," says the head of the Center for Clinical Studies at Jena University Hospital, Frank M. Brunkhorst.
Infectiologist Clemens Wendtner also sees a great opportunity in the use of the agent: "With this simple, low-side-effect and cost-effective treatment, not only could many outpatients with mild Covid disease receive medical help in the early phase."
The pressure on the hospitals could also be reduced, which is an important argument in times of scarce beds in view of the ongoing third corona wave, according to the chief physician at the Schwabing Clinic in Munich.
Since it is particularly the severe Covid courses that can bring a health system to a standstill, a good effect of the asthma drug would be elementary.
The situation in the intensive care beds could possibly relax this way.
Asthma medication against corona: Experts call for "urgent" follow-up study
The experts and the study authors themselves point out that the results of the study were carried out with relatively few patients and therefore need to be replicated in a broader study *.
The English researchers only used budesonide in 146 Covid patients in their work.
A large phase III study with around 1000 patients is therefore “urgently needed”, according to Brunkhorst.
If the observations are correct, it will have an enormous effect - and budesonide is available all over the world, summarizes Suttorp.
(as / dpa)
* In science, replication is the repeated execution of a study with a similar methodology, but usually by other scientists.