Budesonide, a cheap asthma drug, can alleviate covid-19 at home

AS VACCINATION against covid-19 gathers speed, the end of the covid-19 pandemic is starting to hover on the horizon. But not everyone will take the vaccine and none of the jabs is 100% effective at preventing any illness at all. Even where vaccination rates are high some people will, at some point, become infected. Results from a clinical trial in Britain published today show that budesonide, a cheap generic drug they can take at home, will make their illness slightly less miserable.

Budesonide is a corticosteroid drug widely used by people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, who take it using a palm-sized inhaler. Early in the pandemic doctors noticed that people with these conditions were under-represented among covid-19 patients. That looked odd, because they are particularly susceptible to other respiratory infections such as the flu. Laboratory studies found that in Petri dishes budesonide inhibits replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19. Like steroids in general, the drug also has an anti-inflammatory effect. All these things suggested that it was worth trying in patients with covid-19.