LONDON: A cheap and readily available steroid has been found to significantly reduce the risk of death for patients experiencing serious symptoms of COVID-19.

Research from the UK’s University of Bristol found that hydrocortisone, an anti-inflammatory steroid, reduces the risk of death in seriously ill patients by 31 percent.

The research also found that two other anti-inflammatory drugs reduce the risk of death in seriously ill patients by 20 percent.

Some studies have previously pointed to the effectiveness of hydrocortisone and other steroid drugs in treating seriously ill COVID-19 patients.

But this round of research into this family of drugs, coordinated by the World Health Organization, is the most comprehensive yet.

“Steroids are a cheap and readily available medication, and our analysis has confirmed that they are effective in reducing deaths amongst the people most severely affected by COVID-19,” said Jonathan Sterne, professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at the University of Bristol.

Martin Landray, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Oxford, said hydrocortisone and other steroids tested in the trials are “widely available, cheap, well understood drugs.”

He added: “These drugs have been around for decades. They are the sort of drugs that every medical student learns almost as soon as they open a clinical pharmacology textbook.”