Dexamethasone in Blacks

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Anchor lead: More trials to establish best practices for use of dexamethasone in different populations are needed, Elizabeth Tracey reports

A trial known as RECOVERY in the UK revealed the news that many people with severe COVID-19 infection could benefit from the steroid drug dexamethasone. Namandje Bumpus, director of pharmacology and molecular sciences at Johns Hopkins, says additional studies looking at the drug in specific populations are needed.

Bumpus: With dexamethasone there’s a lot more work to be done around understanding this drug response in populations. There’s not really anything known as far as differences in the Hispanic population. But as far as African Americans there are studies pointing to differences. There’s published work looking at black people that are asthmatic versus people that are non-asthmatic, basically showing that black people required more dexamethasone to get this activation effect you would expect from the drug.  :34

Bumpus says such studies are underway in the US. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.