Although the paper is not even officially published yet, everyone has already heard the results. We have our first treatment that appears to reduce mortality in COVID-19 patients. For a week or so, we only had press release, which is not really good when practicing medicine.

Now, there is a pre-print manuscript.

These results are incredibly promising. They can and should change practice immediately.

The biggest risk, which almost always exists when we see promising results, is indication creep. That is, we might erroneously extrapolate the excellent results here to inappropriate patients.

This is especially true for patients who would have been excluded from this trial, but the data suggests that there are even subgroups in whom we may wish to withhold treatment.

The paper
Horby PW et al. Effect of Dexamethasone in Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19 – Preliminary Report. medRxiv Preprint 2020. [Epub Ahead of Print] **Note – this is a preprint version of the paper. It has not been peer reviewed yet.** NCT04381936

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