Steroids: Too Little Too Late in COVID-19 Respiratory Illness

To this day, the Infectious Disease Society of America and the National Institutes of Health Guidelines do not advise prehospital use of corticosteroids in COVID-19 illness.

Conversely oral and or nebulized steroids have been a part of the FLCCC and McCullough protocols since 2020. Justification for early steroids sadly comes from an autopsy study of fatal cases by Kato et al who evaluated 61 cases from the NIH, Cornell, and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

The bottom line is that after 20 days, SARS-CoV-2 is gone from the trachea and the big problem is mucus plugging and congestion. Within the small blood vessels of the lungs, blood clots are forming. Kato showed the only factor associated with reduced mucus in these fatal cases was dexamethasone most commonly used at 6 mg a day in the IDSA and NIH protocols.

For reference, dexamethasone is routinely administered for brain swelling at 10 mg intravenously every 4-6 hours. In respiratory inflammation (asthma, allergic pneumonitis), the most commonly administered steroid is intravenous solumedrol 60-125 mg every 6 to 12 hours. In the McCullough protocol, I did not hesitate to initially recommend oral prednisone 60 mg a day and later come into the practice of using 20 mg every 12 hours with a 5-10 day taper.

It is interesting to note none of these deceased patients received the FLCCC or McCullough protocols prior to admission. If they did, they wouldn’t be on the autopsy table.

Reposted from the author’s Substack

Reference

Kato T, Asakura T, Edwards CE, Dang H, Mikami Y, Okuda K, Chen G, Sun L, Gilmore RC, Hawkins P, De la Cruz G, Cooley MR, Bailey AB, Hewitt SM, Chertow DS, Borczuk AC, Salvatore S, Martinez FJ, Thorne LB, Askin FB, Ehre C, Randell SH, O’Neal WK, Baric RS, Boucher RC. Prevalence and Mechanisms of Mucus Accumulation in COVID-19 Lung Disease. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2022 Dec 1;206(11):1336-1352. doi: 10.1164/rccm.202111-2606OC. PMID: 35816430.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.

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Dr. McCullough is a practicing internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist managing the cardiovascular complications of both the viral infection and the injuries developing after the COVID-19 vaccine in Dallas TX, USA. He has dozens of peer-reviewed publications on the infection, multiple US and State Senate testimonies, and has commented extensively on the medical response to the COVID-19 crisis in TheHill, America Out Loud, NewsMax, and on FOX NEWS Channel.

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John Leake studied history and philosophy with Roger Scruton at Boston University. He then went to Vienna, Austria on a graduate school scholarship and ended up living in the city for over a decade, working as a freelance writer and translator. He is a true crime writer with a lifelong interest in medical history and forensic medicine.