Dr. Richard Bartlett from West Texas first called budesonide the “silver bullet” for COVID-19 treatment and was censored for his claim that the inhaled corticosteroid could ease the infection.
“We started treating patients with a three-part protocol that included inhaled budesonide,” Bartlett told The Texan.
“Over and over again we found it was effective in preventing severe illness,” Bartlett said, adding, “With budesonide, we were able to move patients off the ventilator in the ICU in Odessa hospitals.”
A new Brazilian study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine discovered that inhaled budesonide, alongside a serotonin reuptake inhibitor called fluvoxamine, reduces the patient’s need for complex medical care.
“The second most populous country in the world, India, and Australia and others in the world have added budesonide to their early treatment strategy, and it all started here in Texas,” Bartlett stated. “But has any federal or state agency done so? No, and to their shame.”
Reporting from The Texan:
Despite the criticism, Bartlett’s treatment protocol drew interest, and in 2021 researchers at the University of Oxford found that inhaled budesonide in the early stages of COVID-19 reduced the relative risk of requiring urgent care or hospitalization by 90 percent. Subsequent studies confirmed budesonide’s antiviral effect and use for preventing hospitalization and death, but while India and other countries added the drug to their early treatment protocols, the CDC and the World Health Organization have not done so.
