health

Asthma drug budesonide speeds recovery for at-home COVID-19 patients

12 Comments
By Kate Kelland

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© Thomson Reuters 2021.

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I have slight asthma. At the beginning of this pandemic, I went to my doctor to restock on old inhalers, just in case I need to self-medicate, in the case of a slow response to treatment by the health center. I guess I had the right idea! A private 1 on 1 student of mine at a juku tested positive on Thursday. I had taught her on Tuesday and received the phone call on Friday from my manager. The health center did not contact me directly and left this responsibility on my manager. He tells me that the hokken-jo (health center?) will contact me if needed. Forgot that! I have my wife call. They tell us that my student's family needs to get tested first, but that won't be till Saturday. If they test positive, then they will call me on Monday so I can set up an appointment for a test. In the meantime, I have to self-quarantine and hope for the best. BUT if I choose to pay, I can go to a nearby clinic. I wonder what most would do? Well, I started taking my asthma medication and tried booking an appointment for the first available slot. Called the nearest few clinics that offer to test, but testing isn't available on weekends!! My wife called around and found a prefectural testing center in the city, that is open on weekends, but the first available slot isn't till today, a Sunday. I'm now waiting anxiously for my time to arrive. Had a fever of 37.5 yesterday but it kept fluctuating up and down. Had a headache all day too.

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These are very positive news, but should not be over-hyped. At this point it is very likely this is going to help, but we still don't know how much, so it is better to wait until the full results of the trials are published and reviewed.

A good point is that if this drug is proven effective there are many alternatives that are likely useful as well, and that this helps proving the ridiculous conspiracy theories about doctors hiding effective drugs false. Medicine and science professionals are tirelessly searching for options to fight the disease and reduce the risk, giving results as these.

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@wtfjapan?

Feel better! At least your manager told you about it. A teacher I know, in her office one of the other teachers tested positive and neither the administration or her manager said anything about it. She found out just through chatting with other teachers. They also won't let her teach from home while she's waiting for results or are recommending her to get tested. So ridiculous.

Anyways, it's great that they're making progress and developments in medical research. I'm so thankful for the researchers and development teams right now. I cant imagine the pressure they're under.

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@viruxrex "ridiculous conspiracy theories" ? I strongly believe researchers are doing a amazing work but there is also real fact about attempts to eliminate some treatment and since you seem familiar with that matter, can you please explain to the audience The Lancet Gate in details ? Btw, are you working indirectly on a payroll of one of those big pharma companies? Would be nice to to know about your conflict of interest regarding your post in here.

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That seems to be because budesonide inhibits the ACE2 receptors, and the SARS-COV-2 uses the ACE2 receptors to infect the lungs.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200615/Inhaled-steroids-reduce-ACE2-expression-in-COPD-lungs.aspx

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@wobot

Ivermectin is one of the set used by the anti-vax brigade.

Ivermectin, vitamin C, Zinc. Self medicate - hooray I'm cured.

India is hardly a good example of Covid control.

Even its maker, a "big pharma" company, says don't use it for Covid.

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Budesonide is not a treatment of covid19 in itself. It counters only the symptoms.

It helps you to breath so the day you feel without oxygen, you don't need to go to hospital.

In fact, covid kills either by cytokine storm (lungs no longer functional because filled because of innate immunitary response) or pneumonia (infection, due to exhaustion, in fact especially for old people and people with comorbidities).

That treatment helps for the latter case but in fact for all illnesses you feel in need for better breathing. Because no breathing, shutdowwn of organs.

I read a scientific study where people with asthma tended to be less affected by covid19 symptoms (sorry can't find back the source), which is counterintuitive. Just because they used Budesonide like medicine. Not because they were with specific genetics.

In my opinion, they shall distribute Salbutamol, very cheap if no oxygen available...(case of India currently)

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And by the way, not yet peer reviewed. So results not yet scientificallly confirmed.

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"ridiculous conspiracy theories" ? I strongly believe researchers are doing a amazing work but there is also real fact about attempts to eliminate some treatment and since you seem familiar with that matter, can you please explain to the audience The Lancet Gate in details ?

Yes ridiculous, because the conspiracy completely depends on every single university, research institute, big hospital, etc. to be "in" the conspiracy (or completely full of incompetent people) this is obviously impossible.

Limited, small studies will give results all over the place but they are useful to identify things that may be of use, bigger studies with better designs and more statistical power come then to prove or not if those things that seemed useful actually have any efficacy or not, This is what science deniers qualify as "eliminate some treatments" the correct, valid and desirable elimination of background signal from small studies in order to find actually useful things. This is what happened with HCQ and what appear to be happening with ivermectin, noise that appeared to have meaning until better research found nothing of use.

The lancet gate is yet another proof that the supposed world conspiracy to push only expensive drugs and hide effective but cheap ones is just nonsense. Because if it was true the fraud would be exactly the kind of thing that would have never been discovered (the research retracted "proved" that HCQ was not only useless but actually made the patients worse) but instead the problem was identified and corrected extremely quickly and the responsible parties shamed as it should be.

Btw, are you working indirectly on a payroll of one of those big pharma companies? Would be nice to to know about your conflict of interest regarding your post in here.

You don't understand the meaning of conflict of interest, that applies when someone requires trust from others that the information he is using to prove something is truthful (most commonly the data he is producing and publishing) I on the contrary make a point of not needing ever anybody to just trust what I say is true and instead argument from publicly available information. You are free to assume I am a street sweeper or the CEO of any company it does not have any weight on any of of my comments.

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Great achievement.

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The Austrian doctor Lisa-M. Kellermayr has been successfully treating patients with budesonide for over half a year now, preventing hundreds of hospital stays. Of course, clinical trials are welcome but it's not really a new idea.

https://twitter.com/drlisamaria/status/1381339828416094213

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