New research released on Wednesday, September 2 confirms that common, affordable steroids can reduce deaths among critically ill Covid-19 patients, CNN reports.

One study, published in the medical journal JAMA, examined several randomized trials involving more than 1,700 patients. Patients who received the steroids were more likely to survive, and there was no sign of an increased risk of serious of adverse events among those who received the drugs.

Among 678 patients treated with steroids, 32.7% died. Among 1,025 patients who received usual care or a placebo, 41.5% died.

"The bottom line is that these are the sickest patients who are being treated with corticosteroids in these trials and mortality is very high, it's about 40% in the absence of treatment with corticosteroids," said Jonathan A. C. Sterne of the University of Bristol, an author of one of the papers published Wednesday.

"The treatment with corticosteroids reduces mortality of 40% to 32%, that's a 20% relative reduction, or if you like to a better way to think about it, an easier way to think about, it is that out of every hundred patients treated with corticosteroids, eight additional patients do not die."

These results suggest steroids should be part of standard care for critically ill Covid-19 patients, researchers wrote.

The new analysis confirms preliminary results previously shared by researchers from the UK-based Recovery trial; results from that trial are included in the new analysis. In June, those researchers said a low-dose regimen of dexamethasone for 10 days was found to reduce the risk of death by a third among hospitalized patients requiring ventilation in the trial.