⁍ Europe’s healthcare regulator has endorsed using dexamethasone to treat COVID-19 patients with breathing difficulties.

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⁍ The drug could be an option to treat adults and adolescents needing oxygen therapy or mechanical ventilation.

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⁍ The decades old drug is cheap and widely available, commonly used against a range of inflammatory conditions.

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– A steroid that’s been used for decades to treat inflammatory conditions has just been given the green light by Europe’s health regulator to treat people with a common respiratory illness, reports Reuters. The European Medicines Agency gave the green light to dexamethasone after reviewing results from a study that showed it reduced death rates in severely ill patients by about a third. The drug is commonly used to treat inflammatory conditions such as Crohn’s disease and is cheap and widely available. The study, called RECOVERY, showed that dexamethasone reduced death rates by about a third in severely ill, hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The drug has since been approved in Japan as a COVID-19 treatment. The decades old drug is cheap and widely available, commonly used against a range of inflammatory conditions. Companies can now apply for a license to their national regulators or the EMA for an expanded use of the drug, the watchdog said. It said the recommended dose in adults and adolescents, from the age of 12 years and weighing at least 40 kilograms, was 6 milligrams once a day for up to 10 days.