Robert F. ServiceScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.It would be the best news by far in COVID-19 treatment: According to a preprint published on 22 June, an experimental prostate cancer drug named proxalutamide reduced deaths in hospitalized COVID-19 patients by 77% in a clinical trial in Brazil.
The preprint also claims the drug, which blocks the activity of androgens—male hormones such as testosterone—cut patients’ average hospital stay by 5 days, far more than any other treatment yet tested.
Interim results of the study, announced at a press conference in March, led President Jair Bolsonaro to tout proxalutamide as a wonder cure and spurred Brazilian doctors to dose patients with similar drugs.But.